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iiii 



Kgiiigllsl} (&\mm 





! SELECTIONS 



MOODY 




Class 
Book 



Copyright N^. 



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SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 

Publishers 378-388 Wabash Avenue, CHICAGO 



KBITKD BY 

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Pr9/48€0r of Rhetoric in Brown Uhiv&raity 



^be Xake EngUsb Classics 



SELECTIONS 



DE QUI^^CEY 



INCLUDING 



JOAN OF ARC, THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH, 

LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW, 

AND SAVANNAH LA MAR 



EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 



BY 

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

SOMETIME ASSISTANT PROF.'JSSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNI^^:RSITY 
OF CHICAGO 



CHICAGO 
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 



r 



"R^^ 



Copjnight, 1909 
By SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
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Copyrijrnt Entry 
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CONTENTS 

Prefatory Note 3 

Introduction 

i. life of de quincey 7 

ii. joan of arc 22 

iii. the english mail coach 24 

iv. de quincey 's peculiar distinction as a 

WRITER . 29 



Suggestions for READix(i 



o-") 



Text 

joan of arc 38 

the english mail coach 79 

LEVANA and our LADIES OF SORROW 161 

SAVANNAH-LA-MAR '. 172 



Notes 17 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

The text here given is that of Professor Mas- 
son's Edinburgh edition. De Quincey's notes have 
been omitted, as too discursive and remote for the 
purpose of a school text, but their substance, 
wherever it is relevant, has been preserved in con- 
densed form. De Quincey's excessive use of italics 
has been modified in accordance with modern lit- 
erary usage, but wherever the italicized forms are 
needful to the sense, they have been retained. In 
order to give the student a comprehensive view of 
the type of writing for which De Quincey is es- 
pecially famous, two examples of his lyrical prose 
have been added to the volume; these are "Savan- 
nah-la-Mar" and "Levana and Our Ladies of Sor- 
row." 



1 



I. 

Life of De Quincey. 



The biography of Thomas de Quincey is known 
to us chiefly from what he has himself told us in 
his writings. His mature life was secluded and 
mysterious in a singular degree, but while leading 
this shadowy existence he wrote concerning his 
earlier years a series of papers so intimate and 
vivid that they have taken rank among the clas- 
sics of personal confessions. This, together with 
the fact that his highly sensitive nature developed 
very early, gives to his childhood and youth an 
exceptional interest. 

De Quincey was born in Manchester, in 1785, 
the fifth in a family of eight children. His mother 
was a woman of austere intellect and cold char- 
acter, a strict dissenter in religion, and a dealer- 
out of Roman justice to her awe-stricken depend- 
ants. His father, a prosperous merchant in the 
foreign trade, was a victim of consumption, and 
was compelled to reside abroad, at Lisbon, Ma- 
deira, and in the West Indies. Soon after the 
birth of Thomas, the family removed to a property 
near Manchester known as The Farm, and after- 
7 



8 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

wards to a more pretentious villa named Greenhay, 
both now absorbed into the "brick and uproars" 
of the great manufacturing city. It was at Green- 
hay that De Quincey's father came home to die, 
and the boy never forgot the sight of the pale 
unfamiliar face against the white cushions, as the 
invalid drove slowly up the driveway to the house 
on a lovely summer evening. At Greenhay also, 
in his seventh year, De Quincey suffered the loss of 
his sister Elizabeth, a beautiful child of nine, to 
whom he was passionately attached. In a cele- 
brated chapter of his autobiography he has de- 
scribed his sister's death and its effect upon his 
own imagination, startled by grief into abnormal 
activity. Stealing unobserved to the room in 
which the body of the dead girl had been laid, he 
closed the door softly behind him, and turned to 
look for the last time upon the beloved face. "But 
the bed had been moved," he says, "and the back 
was now turned toward myself. Nothing 
met my eyes but one large window, wide open, 
through which the sun of midsummer at midday 
w^as showering down torrents of splendor." 
Through his mind passed memories of Bible stories 
heard in his dead sister's company, the sun-steeped 
landscape of Palestine, cornfields where the apos- 
tles plucked the corn, and the tossing palms of 
Christ's entry into Jerusalem, He turned to look 
upon his sister's face, and as he gazed at it a "sol- 
emn wind began to blow ... a wind that might 
have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand 



INTEODUCTION. ^ 

centuries ... a trance fell upon me. A vault 
seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, 
a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as 
if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever, and 
the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; 
but tJiat also ran before us and fled away contin- 
ually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on 
forever and ever. ... I slept — for how long I can- 
not say; slowly I recovered my self-possession and, 
when I woke, found myself standing, as before, 
close to my sister's bed." This experience, even 
though it may have been heightened in the recital, 
shows how early De Quincey had developed the 
dreaming faculty which was to furnish him the 
matter of his most remarkable writings. 

The next chapter dealing with his childhood De 
Quincey has entitled "Introduction to the World 
of Strife.'' It describes, with a delightful humor 
which the somewhat heavy title would not lead us 
to expect, his martyrdom at the hands of his elder 
brother, William, a very demon of mischief, the 
complete antitype of the shy, frail, studious boy 
whom he made the victim of his fantastic pranks. 
One feature of their life consisted in daily battles 
with the Manchester factory lads, in which Will- 
iam, as commander-in-chief, spurred on the quak- 
ing Thomas to acts of tremulous daring. After each 
battle he published a bulletin loading Thomas with 
official disgrace, or, after an unusual exhibition of 
fortitude, conferring upon him an officer's com- 



10 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

mission and the Order of the Bath, onl}^, on the 
following day, to degrade him summarily to the 
ranks or to imprison him on a charge of treason. 
Not content with this external warfare, William 
created himself ruler of an imaginary "kingdom 
of Tigrosylvania" and assigned to Thomas the 
rival "kingdom of Gombroon,'' which its ruler 
hastened to locate at an insuperable distance from 
his brother's realm. To his dismay, however, the 
ruler of Tigrosylvania announced that, although 
the center and capital of his kingdom was indeed 
as far removed as the enemy had supposed, yet 
there existed "great horns and promontories'' run- 
ning down toward Gombroon, and rendering that 
unfortunate country liable to invasion at any time. 
The king of Gombroon defended his subjects with 
frantic ingenuity, imtil the humiliating secret was 
revealed that the Gombroonians were in so low a 
state of civilization as actually to possess tails, and 
the entire population was compelled by the Tigro- 
sylvanian conquerors to maintain a sitting posture 
for six hours a day, in order gradually to remove 
these members. The whole chapter, the second of 
the Autobiographic Sketches, should be read by all 
who wish to appreciate De Quincey's humor at its 
best. 

In his twelfth year De Quincey entered the 
Grammar School at Bath, whither his family had 
removed after the death of the father. He was 
already a prodigy of scholarship, and he won with 
his Latin verses a huge reputation in the school. 



INTRODUCTION. H 

His generosity in supplying verses for others, and 
his courage in refusing to yield to the threats of 
an older boy whose performance was eclipsed by 
the brilliant little new-comer, gave De Quincey 
his first taste of approval and power, for hitherto 
he had concurred implicitly in his elder brother's 
view of him as an object worthy only of con- 
temptuous pity. His career at the school was 
cut short by an accidental blow on the head which 
led to a serious illness. He has given us a partial 
list of the books read to him during his conva- 
lescence. The titles make a portentous array; 
they show on what strong meat the young intel- 
lects of that day were fed. Paradise Lost and 
the Orlando Furioso are among the lightest of the 
books mentioned. 

A journey to Eton and thence to the West of 
Ireland, in the company of a young Irish noble- 
man, Lord Westport, whose acquaintance he had 
made at Bath, formed De Quincey's introduction 
to the larger world. From this time on, he says, 
his mind expanded so rapidly that whereas hith- 
erto his growth in understanding might have 
been likened to the creeping hour-hand of a watch, 
now it was like the racing second-hand. This 
swift unfolding of his powers was hastened by a 
visit which he paid to a friend of his mother's, 
one Lady Carbery, a young woman of parts, who 
flattered him by becoming his pupil in Greek and 
who nicknamed him her "Admirable Crichton." 



12 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

II. 

At the age of sixteen De Quincey was entered 
for a three years' term at the Manchester Gram- 
mar School. This proved to be the beginning of 
troubles which came near to wrecking his life. 
He had protested to his mother and his guardians 
against being sent to the school, on the ground 
that he had outgrown the kind of routine instruc- 
tion there offered; but his objections had been 
overruled because of an "exhibition" or scholarship 
of fifty pounds a year, offered to graduates of the 
school on going up to Oxford. Not only did the 
school-tasks offer no stimulus to his eager mind, 
but a system of incessant roll calls deprived him 
of all opportunity for exercise and relaxation. His 
constitutional tendency to melancholy, aggravated 
by his bad health, at last drove him to despair. 
He determined to run away. After borrowing a 
few pounds by mail from his old friend. Lady Car- 
bery, he slipped away from the school one sum- 
mer morning, with a volume of "some English 
poet" in one pocket and a copy of Euripides in 
tlie other. He walked the forty miles to Chester, 
where his mother then resided. Her horror at his 
rebellion was mitigated by the indulgent view of 
the matter taken by her brother, a soldier just 
returned with a large fortune from service in 
Bengal. To his energetic nature the boy's truancy 
appealed as highly natural, not to say praise- 
worthy; and upon his intercession De Quincey 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

was allowed to spend the summer tramping among 
the Welsh mountains, on an allowance of a guinea 
a week. This did very well so long as the good 
weather lasted, for he could recoup his expenses 
at the inns by sleeping at times under the stars 
and living upon the coarse fare of peasant cot- 
tages. But as winter came on, his straitened purse 
and his craving for intellectual society, together 
with that incurable restlessness which pursued him 
through life, determined him to make his way 
to London, with the hope of raising sufficient 
funds from the money-lenders to last until he came 
of age and entered into his inheritance. 

His plan, however, miscarried. The Jew to 
whom he applied put him off from month to 
month, meanwhile draining from him, for the 
purchase of imaginary stamps and legal papers, 
the few pounds which he possessed. His condition 
became more and more forlorn, until he was glad 
to be allowed to sleep in an empty house in Greek 
Street, Soho, by courtesy of the money-lender's 
attorney, who carried on his master's mysterious 
business by day in one room of the gloomy tene- 
ment. De Quincey's only friends were a female 
waif of ten, who acted as care-taker of the de- 
serted house, and "poor Ann," a girl of the pave- 
ments, with whom he trod day after day and night 
after night the crowded desert of Oxford Street. 
At length De Quincey went to Eton to try to get 
assistance in raising the desired loan; when he re- 



14 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

turned, Ann had disappeared. The memory of the 
unfortunate, warm-hearted creature pursued him 
always, shaping many of those dreadful dreams 
which visited him in the years of his slavery to 
opium. At last, after suffering terrible privation 
and sowing the seeds of the disease which later 
drove him to seek respite from pain in narcotics, 
he was discovered by his relatives, and was sent to 
Oxford. 

At Oxford De Quincey led the life of a bookish 
recluse, scarcely sharing at all in the emulous 
activities of the place. His only close friend was 
a German named Schwartzburg, who taught him 
Hebrew and aroused in him a lifelong interest 
in German literature and philosophy. He passed 
a brilliant written examination, but was seized 
with panic on the day of his oral test, and left 
Oxford without a degree. 

During his Oxford course, upon a visit to Lon- 
don, De Quincey, to relieve the pangs of neuralgia, 
took his first dose of opium. It was on a rainy 
Sunday afternoon that he stepped across the fatal 
threshold of the little druggist shop. The imme- 
diate effect of the drug was magical. The druggist 
^*^looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal drug- 
gist might be expected to look on a rainy London 
Sunday, . . . and, furthermore, out of my shil- 
ling returned to me wliat seemed to be real copper 
halfpence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. . . . 
Nevertheless, he has ever since figured in my 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

mind as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist, 
sent down to earth on a special mission to myself.'' 
In this strain of half-jesting hyperbole he con- 
tinues to describe the experience, betraying the 
curious levity which alternated with funereal earn- 
est in all his writings about the opium habit. A 
little further on, the sliadow darkens over the 
page : ^^But, if I talk in this wa}^, the reader will 
think I eiUi laughing, and I can assure him that 
noljody will laugh long who deals much with 
opium.'' 

III. 

As early as his school days De Quincey had dis- 
covered the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
wdiose work was at that time either quite unknown 
or the subject of contemptuous ridicule. Upon the 
boy's sensitive appreciation the new - poetry to 
which England was deaf fell with magic power. 
For years he looked to the Lake country as a sacred 
Mecca, longed-for but unapproachable. During 
his college career he had made the acquaintance of 
Coleridge, and had entered into correspondence 
with Wordsworth, who graciously welcomed him as 
a disciple. A year or two after leaving college De 
Quincey saw one of his dearest dreams fulfilled, 
in the opportunity which came to him of settling 
at Grasmere in the very cottage where Words- 
worth had lived. Here, surrounded by his books, 
De Quincey lived from his twenty-fourth to his 



1(3 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

thirty-sixth year (1809-1821), reading prodigious- 
ly and consuming incredible quantities of opium. 
The vast and splendid dreams which the drug in- 
duced were paid for by periods of awful depression, 
when the sufferer lay in a complete prostration of 
body and w^ll, a prey to all the powers of darkness. 
When under the influence of the narcotic, the for- 
gotten impressions of a lifetime would revive, take 
on unearthly shapes and colors, and drift through 
wild phantasmagoric changes. The dreamer 
^'moved, or hung, or sank, in measureless chasms, 
unshored astronomical abysses, or depths without a 
star; minutes shot out into years, or centuries 
shriveled into minutes." Under the spell of his 
tormenting visions he "fled from the wrath of 
Brama through all the forests of Asia." He "ran 
into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the 
summit, or in secret rooms." He was buried alive 
"in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, 
in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyra- 
mids." x\t times the dream-scenery would change 
into "multitudinous and lamp-lit London, with its 
mazes and labyrinths," through which he must 
renew for the thousandth time his hopeless search 
for the lost Ann of Oxford Street. 

In 1816, in his thirty-first year, he shook him- 
self free for a time from his slavery to opium, and 
married a daughter of one of the dalesmen of 
the neighborhood. Children were born to them, 
and in a few years pecuniary difficulties compelled 



INTKODUCTION. 17 

De Qiiincey to rouse himself, and to turn to litera- 
ture for a livelihood. He was now thirty-five 
years old, and had as yet written nothing ; but his 
mind was richly stored. His reputation was made 
at one stroke by the paper entitled Confessions of 
an Opium-Eater, being an Extract from the Life 
of a Scliolar. This appeared in the London Mag- 
azine in 18? 1. It was afterward much amplified, 
and a sequel entitled Suspiria de Profundis 
(Sighs from the Depths) was added. The auda- 
cious frankness of these autobiographic papers, 
their extraordinary eloquence and vividness, the 
mystery surrounding the person of the author, all 
worked together to give them instant fame. For 
some time De Quincey wrote under the pseudonym 
of "The Opium-Eater," and articles from his pen 
were eagerly welcomed by the publishers both in 
London and in Edinburgh. From 1821 to 18'?5 
he spent most of his time in London, where he en- 
J03Td the friendship of Charles Lamb and Thomas 
Hood. Hood has left us a picture of the shy recluse 
in his lodgings, surrounded by "a German Ocean'' 
of books and manuscripts, on many of which a tell- 
tale purple stain showed where the glass of opium 
had rested; for De Quincey continued to use the 
drug, though in diminished quantities, to the end 
of his life. By reason of some peculiarity of his 
physical constitution, the effects were less baneful 
in his case than they usually are ; but to the weak- 
ening of will and the inability to sustain prolonged 



IS SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

effort which are inevitable results of opium-taking, 
is probably due the fact that he left no monu- 
mental work behind him and remained to the end 
a writer of magazine articles. Of these he poured 
out a constant stream, upon a great variety of 
topics. The most signal productions of his long 
career, besides the autobiographic writing already 
mentioned, are perhaps Murder Considered as One 
of the Fine Arts, The Caesars, The Revolt of a 
Tartar Tribe, The Spanish Military Nun, Joan of 
Arc, and The English Mail Coach with its ap- 
pended Dream-Fugue. 

IV. 

A connection with Blackwood's Magazine drew 
De Quincey to Edinburgh, and in 1830 he r'^moved 
permanently thither, his wife and children follow- 
ing him from Grasmere. In 1837 his wife died, 
and he was left at the age of fifty-two a helpless 
widower wdth six children, the eldest a girl not yet 
out of her teens. This girl had fortunately inherited 
the brave character of her mother, the Cumberland 
dalesman's daughter. It was by her exertions that 
the family was settled, in 1840, in a neat cottage 
in the village of Lasswade, a few miles from Edin- 
burgh. Here De Quincey resided for the remain- 
der of his life, though with frequent restless ex- 
cursions, and mysterious movings from lodging to 
lodging in Edinburgh, as one room after another, 
rented as a place of study and retreat, became 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

"snowed up" with books and papers, and the 
strange little man, in despair of bringing order out 
of chaos, locked the door upon the welter and 
sought another place where the process of confused 
accumulation might begin anew. 

The stories of De Quincey's eccentricity in ap- 
pearance and conduct during his Edinburgh years 
bring before us with great vividness his strange 
personality, which seems to have gone through life 
in a kind of insulating medium, beholding the 
world, commenting upon it, often with searching 
truth and great brilliancy, but never quite touching 
it. There w^as in his nature an element of the elfin, 
the elusive, a suggestion of something not quite 
human and not quite sane. He was much given 
to nocturnal walks in the country surrounding 
Edinburgh, and would sometimes in summer make 
his couch under the stars, as in the days of his 
boyish rambles in Wales. On these walks he car- 
ried with him a lantern, which, with his diminu- 
tive figure, his costume careless to the point of 
grotesqueness, his anxious, delicate, thought-worn 
face, and his habit of glancing over his shoulder 
as if in fear of pursuit, must have made a spectacle 
sufficiently disconcerting to anyone who encoun- 
tered him. His helplessness in money matters was 
that of a child. His fear of cabmen was so great 
that he passed by their waiting places in Princes 
Street as by a den of wild beasts, with quickened 
step and eyes steadfastly averted in the dread lest 



20 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

one of them might horribly imagine himself to 
have been signaled. He addressed his landlady 
and his washerwoman with old-world courtesy, and 
often with a stately rhetoric which left them in a 
trance of admiration but without the slightest 
comprehension of his meaning. His wonderful 
gifts of conversation made him much sought after 
in Edinburgh drawing-rooms, but such was his 
secretiveness with regard to his temporary lodg- 
ings and his distrust of crowds, that nothing save 
a lucky combination of strategy and force could 
secure his presence in any social gathering. Once 
there, however, especially after the night had worn 
on toward morning, he would fascinate all hearers 
with his suggestive, picturesque talk, which, unlike 
the monologues of Coleridge and other famous 
talkers, was genuine conversation, delicately re- 
sponsive to the promptings of others. His affec- 
tion and gentleness in his own family circle were, 
we are told by many witnesses, beautiful to see, 
although his incurable absentmindedness, to say 
nothing of his strange habits, made him at times 
a household trial. "He was not," says his daugh- 
ter, **^a reassuring man for nervous people to live 
with, as those nights were exceptions on which he 
did not set something on fire, the commonest inci- 
dent being for some one to look up from book or 
w^ork to say casually, Papa, your hair is on fire; 
of which a calm Is it, my love f and a hand rubbing 
out the blaze was all the notice taken." Perhaps 



INTEODUCTION. 21 

the most striking glimpse of De Quincey which 
we have is that given by Carlyle. He tells us 
how, entering a room one evening, he saw De 
Quincey, small, delicate, and fair, "sitting like a 
child under the candles/' As he came nearer, and 
beheld the face, which a moment before seemed so 
young, crossed and recrossed by an infinitude of 
tiny wrinkles, he started back with the mute ejac- 
ulation, "Eccovi,"^ this child has been in hell V 

As has been the case with so many British writ- 
ers, De Quincey found in America his first full 
appreciation. The earliest complete edition of his 
works appeared in Boston. This brought forth a 
proposal from an Edinburgh publisher that De 
Quincey should himself undertake a collected edi- 
tion, with such changes and additions as he saw 
fit to make. The last ten years of his life were 
devoted to this labor. He died in 1859, at the age 
of seventy-four. The last words upon his lips 
were "Sister, sister !"^addressed as if in an ecstacy 
of recognition to the beloved playmate who had 
died nearly seventy years before. He was buried 
in the West Churchyard of Edinburgh, where a 
tablet upon the crumbling wall, close under the 
Castle Eock, now marks his resting-place. 

♦ An Italian exclamation, equivalent to "Lo !" or "Be- 
hold !" 



22 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

II. 

Joan of Arc. 

The essay upon Joan of Arc was written in 1847. 
It was called forth by that portion of Michelet's 
History of France which deals with the life and 
death of the Maid of Orleans. The death of Joan 
was the work of Englishmen, accomplished, it is 
true, through the help of a French Bishop whom 
they had corrupted. The blame which rested upon 
the English nation for the shameful deed had 
been pressed home by Michelet;^ and De Quincey. 
took up his pen in a mood of retaliation, burning 
to mitigate the charge under which England lay. 
His purpose was two-fold: first, to invalidate 
Michelet's account of the matter wherever this 
account was open to attack; second, to lift the 
French national heroine to a higher pedestal of 
glory than the great historian of her own nation 
had given her, and thus to show the superior mag- 
nanimity of the English mind in the discussion of 
an episode in which Englishmen had played so 
unmagnanimous a role. The essay has therefore a 
double aspect. In part it is a diatribe against the 
French in general and Michelet in particular; in 
part it is a brief summary of the history of Joan, 
used as the basis for a glorification of her charac- 
ter and her career. 



IXTKODUCTION. 23 

These two parts are of very unequal value. The 
first is tinged with prejudice, is uttered in an acri- 
monious and fault-finding tone, and is discursive 
to the point of exasperation. The second portion 
of the essay is, on the contrary, lofty in tone, full 
of exalted enthusiasm for the subject, and couched 
for the most part in language of solemn beauty. 
Unfortunately, these two discordant portions are 
not held apart, but are inextricably woven together. 
As a result, it is impossible to read the essay with 
sustained satisfaction. It must be read for its 
splendid moments, when the author forgets his 
partisanship, when he puts quarreling aside and 
loses himself in contemplation of one of the most 
exalted of human stories. 

Even in those parts of the essay which are not 
controversial, the reader will be met by one of 
De Quincey's unhappy eccentricities, namely, his 
proneness to indulge, at the most inopportune mo- 
ments, in what one of his critics has called "rig- 
marole." This seems a harsh word to apply to any 
portion of the work of a great writer, but whoever 
reads De Quincey's "Joan," and in the midst of 
moving eloquence finds himself suddenly plunged 
into tasteless jesting about Joan's father, his pig- 
sty and the darning of his socks, or into the vapid 
banter which De Quincey bestows upon the peasant 
girl Haumette, will hardly feel inclined to use a 
milder word. De Quincey's apologists have at- 
tempted to defend this aspect of his writing by 



24 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

giving it various euphemistic names; but in reality 
it cannot be defended. It can only be explained 
as an attempt on the part of a complex and subtle 
writer to seek a momentary relief from the strain 
of thought, or else as a deliberate effort to give to 
his writing a popular tone. When it has been in 
some such manner accounted for, it should be for- 
gotten as soon as possible, in order that the mind 
may be free to receive the really noble impressions 
which, in its highest moments, the essay is fitted 
to convey. These will be found especially in the 
account of Domremy and its surroundings, of La 
Pucelle's trial and death, and in the peroration 
contrasting the deathbed visions of the martyred 
girl with those of the evil-hearted bishop who pro- 
nounced her doom. 



III. 

The English Mail Coach. 

Tlie English Mail Coach (1849) is one of the 
most interesting and varied of De Quincey's writ- 
ings. It is written from the j^ersonal standpoint, and 
personal reminiscences nearly always called forth 
his happiest powers. It has, moreover, unlike ordi- 
nary autobiographic WTiting, a "broad background of 
national interest. The English mail-coach system 
is here depicted not only at the moment of its 
greatest picturesqueness, but at an epoch wIkmi {he 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

struggle of England against Napoleon made the 
royal mail the focus for an immense national en- 
thusiasm. As has already been said, De Quincey 
was an ardent patriot; his imagination was kin- 
dled and his heart stirred by the scenes in which 
he participated; so that the passages of descrip- 
tion which deal with the mail-coach in its character 
of herald, spreading throughout the anxious king- 
dom news of England's fortunes in battle, are 
among the most impressive to be found in his 
works. In the series of dreams which conclude 
the essay, suggested by the incident of a fatal 
collision between the stage-coach and a light vehi- 
cle encountered in a narrow road at night, De 
Quincey displays the power which marked him out 
most distinctly from the other prose writers of his 
generation — the power of conyeying, in prose, emo- 
tions of mystery and grandeur usually reserved 
for poetry. When we add that portions of the 
paper are meditative in character, that other pas- 
sages are humorous or fantastic, that odd learning 
is scattered everywhere, it is evident that in this 
single essay we may find exemplified almost all the 
elements of De Quincey's genius as a writer. 

The paper is divided into three sections, and the 
first section again into two parts, entitled respec- 
tively ^'The Glory of ]\rotion" and "Going Down 
with Victory." The first of these sub-sections is 
very light in tone, as befits the reminiscences with 
which it deals — reminiscences of coaching trips to 



0(j SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCE Y. 

and from Oxford during the author's college days, 
when every incident of the road furnished matter 
for light-hearted jest. The story of the Chinese 
Emperor's ride in the mail coach presented to him 
by the English Ambassador, the little idyll of 
*^Sweet Fanny of the Bath Road," the grotesque 
account of her grandfather, the old coachman, un- 
der the similitude of an alligator, the race with the 
Birmingham Tally-ho, and De Quincey's bantering 
of the thick-headed Welshman upon the topic — 
all this is given in the irresponsible mood of youth, 
which picks up amusement wherever it can be 
found. It may be noticed in passing that only a 
few lines are devoted to the theme announced in 
the title. 

The next sub-section, entitled "Going Down 
with Victory," is pitched in a loftier key. Through 
it breathes the exultant gladness of a great nation,' 
brought together in bonds of brotherhood by the 
consciousness of martial glory. A great battle has 
been fought in Spain, the battle of Talavera. The 
news has reached London, and thence is to be 
radiated over the whole kingdom by means of the 
royal mail. The nmstering of the coaches before 
the General Postoffice, the start, the scattering of 
the news along the highway, the midnight celebra- 
tion in the post town where the mail halts to 
change horses, make a recital at which every heart 
must thrill. With beautiful art De Quincey has 
shown us the dark threads of personal grief and 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

bereavement weaving themselves with the bright 
strands of public rejoicing. Not a false touch 
mars the large simplicity of the recital. This sec- 
tion of The English Mail Coach deserves to stand 
as a perfect example of narrative art. 

The second main section of the essay, entitled 
"The Vision of Sudden Death," is marred by a 
certain sense of unreality and of straining for 
eifect. De Quincey confesses to having taken 
opium before starting on the journey, and what 
follows has many of the characteristics of his 
opium dreams; 3'et the narrative is given as a bit 
of fact. The result is that De Quincey does not 
succeed in enlisting our entire belief in the tragedy 
which he narrates. Various questions inevitably 
suggest themselves as we read. Why, when he 
saw the frail vehicle so far ahead, did he not 
wake the driver of the coach? Hovr could the 
young lady have received a mortal injury, 
when her comrade escaped unhurt and the car- 
riage in which they both sat remained unshat- 
tered by the collision? These natural queries De 
Quincey makes no show of answering, and in con- 
sequence the reader remains with a residuum of 
incredulity in his mind. Moreover, the prelim- 
inary discussion of the term "sudden death" is 
pedantic, and the account of the accident itself too 
long drawn out. De Quincey's chief fault as a 
writer, diffuseness, worked against him here, to 
the injury of the effect at which he too consciously 



28 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

aimed. Nevertheless, the section contains elements 
of great beauty, and in spite of its shortcomings 
leaves a strong impression upon the memory. 

The concluding section of the paper bears the 
striking title "Dream-Fugue." As the title im- 
plies, De Quincey seeks here, by the presentation of 
.a series of dreams suggested by the preceding trag- 
edy, to induce in the reader a succession of emo- 
tional states like those to which concerted music 
gives rise. He drifts before our inner vision, one 
after another, a series of shadowy and dissolving 
pictures — pictures bearing some analogy to the 
.actual event, but changed by the dream-spell into 
unearthly shapes and colors. At the same time 
he suggests by his style the changes and rhythm 
of a musical composition. The use of the word 
"fugue" in this connection is peculiarly happy. 
The fugue (Latin fug a, flight) is a species of 
polyphonic composition in which the various voices 
or parts enter in turn with their respective melo- 
dies or "themes," one as it were pursuing and an- 
other fleeing through the mazes of contrapuntal 
development, until all are brought together in a 
resonant finale. De Quincey uses as his "themes" 
a series of visionary pictures which suggest emo- 
tions of beauty, pathos, terror, splendor, and awe; 
and these visions pursue each other, weave them- 
selves together, dissolve and reunite, in accordance 
with some wild yet harmonious law of mental asso- 
ciation analogous to the laws of music. As the 



INTRODUCTIOX. 29 

dream progresses, it becomes more and more com- 
plex; and the finale draws together a multitude 
of suggestions in a grandiose climax. Throughout 
the composition, too, there reigns a sense of flight 
and pursuit, each spectral vision hurrying on, as if 
eager to escape from its predecessor and to merge 
itself into the vision about to arise, which in its 
turn propagates itself onward with aerial change 
and phantom speed. 



IV. 



De Quincey's Peculiar Distinction as a 
Writer. 

It is upon a few pieces like the "Dream-Fugue," 
of richly colored lyric prose, drawn from the mat- 
ter of his dreams, and dreamlike in their shadowy 
outlines and unearthly transformations, that De 
Quincey based his chief claim as an original and 
creative writer; and the claim has, upon the 
whole, been allowed by posterity. He calls this 
species of writing a "mode of impassioned prose." 
"Lyrical prose" would perhaps better define its 
quality, for it is essentially an attempt to lift prose 
style into the realm of poetry, to win for it the 
powers and graces traditionally belonging to verse 
composition. The innovation was perhaps hardly 
so great as De Quincey wished the world to be- 
lieve, for certain seventeenth-century writers, Sir 



30 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

Thomas Browne^ Jeremy Taylor, and Milton, had 
already made splendid experiments in the same 
general direction. It is moreover certain that De 
Quincey was stimulated by the then recent example 
of a German writer, Jean Paul Eichter, specimens 
of whose "lyrical prose phantasy" he had, early in 
his own literary career, presented to the English 
public in translation. But when all deductions are 
made, De Quincey's service to English prose, in 
pushing out its boundaries and discovering for it 
new possibilities of beauty, remains undeniable, 
and his influence upon the prose literature of the 
later nineteenth century has been very great, be- 
traying itself in such widely different writers as 
Bulwer and Ruskin. 

Besides the "Dream-Fugue" and certain famous 
passages of his "Confessions" dealing with his 
opium-visions, De Quincey's ventures in this mode 
of imaginative writing include "The Daughter of 
Lebanon," "Savannah-la-Mar," "Memorial Sus- 
piria," and "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow." 
Of these, the last is of most importance. 
"Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow" presents, 
under a mythologic guise, the main types of 
grief and misery which afflict the human mind. 
The figure of Levana is borrowed by De Quincey 
from Roman myth; she is the goddess of Edu- 
cation, who "lifts up" the new-born infant in 
sign that it shall live, and who governs the influ- 
ences conspiring to mould its character. The three 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

Ladies of Sorrow are vast and shadowy personifi- 
cations, associated by De Quincey w4th the god- 
dess as arbiters of the tragic life of man : Mater 
Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears, represents the 
sorrow of death and bereavement; Mater Sus- 
plriorum, Our Lady of Sighs, represents the sor- 
row of grey misery, felt by the outcast, the slave, 
the imprisoned criminal, the person suffering 
under irremediable disgrace; Mater Tenehrar'um, 
Our Lady of Darkness, represents the sorrow of 
wild and suicidal despair. Of this piece, perhaps 
the most perfect example which De Quincey has 
left us of his peculiar gift. Professor Masson says : 
"This is prose-poetry ; but it is more. It is a per- 
manent addition to the mythology of the human 
race. As the Graces are three, as the Fates are 
three, as the Furies are three, as the Muses were 
originally three, so may the varieties and de- 
grees of misery that there are in the w^orld, and 
the proportions of their distribution among man- 
kind, be represented to the human imagination 
forever by De Quincey's Three Ladies of Sorrow 
and his sketch of their figures and kingdoms." 



32 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 



Suggestions for Reading. 

The most extended biography of De Quincey is 
by H. A. Page, Thomas de Quincey: His Life and 
Writings. With Unpublished Correspondence. 
This has been virtually superseded, however, 
by the life of De Quincey in the English Men 
of Letters series, by Professor David Masson. 
Of fundamental importance, in all study of De 
Quincey's life, are his Autobiographic Sketches, 
and his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 
with its sequel, Suspiria de Profundis. It is impos- 
sible to know where, in these remarkable confes- 
sions, the author is recording his actual experience, 
and where he is giving the reins to his fancy. But 
this is of little importance, for both elements in 
the recital help to paint for us the picture of the 
author's mind. Excellent critical essays on De 
Quincey occur in George Saintsbury's Essays in 
English lAierature, 1780-1860, Masson's Essays 
Biographical and Critical, and Leslie Stephen's 
Hours in a Library, Vol. 1. An elaborate analysis 
of De Quincey's style will be found in Professor 
Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. The 
standard edition of his works is Masson's Edin- 
burgh edition in 14 volumes. On the classification 
of the heterogeneous mass of articles that make up 
the bulk of De Quincey's work, consult Masson's 
Life, pp. 159ff. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



JOAN OF ARC. 

What is to be thought of her? What is to be 
thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills 
and forests of Lorraine, that — like the Hebrew 
shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea 

5 — rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, 
out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep 
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of 
armies, and to the more perilous station at the 
right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugu- 

10 rated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victori- 
ous act, such as no man could deny. But so did 
the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was 
read by those w^ho saw her nearest. Adverse ar- 
mies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but 

15 so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the 
voices of all who saw them from a station of good 
will, both w^ere found true and loyal to any prom- 
ises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was 
that made the difference between their subsequent 
33 A 



34 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a noon- 
day prosperity, both personal and public, that 
rang through the records of his people, and be- 
came a byword among his posterity for a thousand 
years, until the scepter was departing from Judah. 5 
The poor forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not 
herself from that cup of rest which she had se- 
cured for France. She never sang together with 
the songs that rose in her native Domremy as 
echoes to the departing steps of invaders. She lo 
mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs 
which celebrated in rapture the redemption of 
France. No ! for her voice was then silent ; no ! 
for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble- 
hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I 15 
believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this 
was among the strongest pledges for thy truth, 
that never once — no, not for a moment of weak- 
ness — didst thou revel in the vision of coronets 
and honor from man. Coronets for thee ! Oh, 20 
no ! Honors, if they come w^hen all is over, are . 
for those that share thy blood. Daughter of 
Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall 
awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the 
dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not 25 
hear thee. Cite her by the apparitors to come and 
receive a robe of honor, but she will be found 
en contumace. When the thunders of universal 
France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim 
the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 35 

up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd 
girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To 
suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life, 

' that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was 

5 it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is 
short ; and the sleep which is in the grave is long ; 
let me use that life, so transitory^ for the glory 
of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the 
sleep which is so long ! This pure creature — 

10 pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self- 
interest, even as she was pure in senses more ob- 
vious — never once did this holy child, as regarded 
herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that 
was traveling to meet her. She might not pre- 

15 figure the very manner of her death ; she saw not 
in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery 
scaffold, the spectators without end, on every road, 
pouring into Eouen as to a coronation, the surg- 
ing smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces 

20 all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here 
and there, until nature and imperishable truth 
broke loose from artificial restraints; — these might 
not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying 
future. But the voice that called her to death, 

25 that she heard forever. 

Great was the throne of France even in those 
days, and great was he that sat upon it ; but well 
Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat 
upon it, was for her; but, on the contrary, that 

30 she was for them; not she by them, but they by 



36 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

her, should rise from the dust Gorgeous were 
the lilies of France, and for centuries had the 
privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, 
until, in another century, the wrath of God and 
man combined to wither them; but well Joanna 5 
knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter 
truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no 
garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blos- 
som, would ever bloom for her! 

But stay. What reason is there for taking up lo 
this subject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 
1847 ? Might it not have been left till the spring 
of 1947, or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes, 
but it is called for, and clamorously. You are 
aware, reader, that amongst the many original 15 
thinkers whom modern France has produced, one 
of the reputed leaders is M. Michelet. All these 
writers are of a revolutionary cast; not in a po- 
litical sense merely, but in all senses; mad, often- 
times, as March hares; crazy with the laughing 20 
gas of recovered liberty; drunk with the wine-cup 
of their mighty Eevolution, snorting, whinnying, 
throwing up their heels, like wild horse? in the 
boundless Pampas, and running races of defiance 
with snipes, or with thef* winds, or with their own 25 
shadows, if they can find nothing else to chal- 
lenge. Some time or other, I, that have leisure to 
read, may introduce you that have not, to two or 
three dozen of these writers ; of whom I can assure 



JOAN OF ARC. 37 

you beforehand that they are often profound, and 
at intervals are even as impassioned as if they 
were come of our best English blood. But now, 
confining our attention to M. Michelet, we in 
5 England — who know him best by his worst book, 
the book against priests, etc. — know him disad- 
vantageously. That book is a rhapsody of inco- 
herence. But his "History of France" is quite 
another thing. A man, in whatsoever craft he 

10 sails, cannot stretch away out of sight when he 
is linked to the windings of the shore by towing 
ropes of History. Facts, and the consequences 
of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's 
lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. 

15 Here, therefore — in his "France" — if not always 
free from flightiness, if now and then off like a 
rocket for an airy wheel in the elouds, M. Michelet, 
with natural politeness, never forgets that he has 
left a large audience waiting for him on earth, 

20 and gazing upwards in anxiety for his return ; re- 
turn, therefore, he does. But History, though 
clear of certain temptations in one direction, has 
separate dangers of its own. It is impossible so 
to write a history of France, or of England — 

25 works becoming every hour more indispensable to 
the inevitably political man of this day — without 
perilous openings for error. If I, for instance, on 
the part of England, should happen to turn my 
labors into that channel, and (on the model of 

30 Lord Percy going to Chevy Chase) 



38 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

A vow to God should make 

My pleasure in the Michelet woods 
Three summer days to take, 

probabl}', from simple delirium, I might hunt M. 
Michelet into delirinni tremens. Two strong 5 
angels stand by the side of Histor}^ whether 
French history or English, as heraldic supporters : 
the angel of research on the left hand, that must 
read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages 
blotted with lies ; the angel of meditation on the 10 
right hand, that must cleanse these lying records 
with fire, even as of old the draperies of asbestos 
were cleansed, and must quicken them into re- 
generated life. Willingly I acknowledge that no 
man will ever avoid innumerable errors of detail ; 15 
with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this 
is impossible; but such errors (though I have a 
bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's service) are not 
the game I chase ; it is the bitter and unfair spirit 
in which M. Michelet writes against England. 20 
Even that, after all, is but my secondary object; 
the real one is Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orleans for 
herself. 

I am not going to write the history of La Pu- 
celle : to do this, or even circumstantially to re- 25 
port the history of her persecution and bitter 
death, of her struggle with false witnesses and 
with ensnaring judges, it would be necessary to 
have before us all the documents, and therefore 
the collection only now forthcoming in Paris. But 30 



JOAX OF ARC. 39 

my purpose is narrower. There have been great 
thinkers, disdaining the careless judgments of 
contemporaries, who have thrown themselves bold- 
ly on the judgment of a far posterit}^ that should 

5 have had time to review, to ponder, to compare. 
There have been great actors on the stage of 
tragic humanity that might, with the same depth 
of confidence, have appealed from the levity of 
compatriot friends — too heartless for the sublime 

10 interest of their story, and too impatient for the 
labor of sifting its perplexities — to the magnanim- 
ity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs 
the Maid of Arc. The ancient Eomans were too 
faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves 

15 not to relent, after a generation or two, before the 
grandeur of Hannibal. Mithridates, a more 
doubtful person, yet, merely for the magic per- 
severance of his indomitable malice, won from 
the same Eomans the only real honor that ever 

20 he received on earth. And we English have ever 
shown the same homage to stubborn enmity. To 
work unflinchingly for the ruin of England; to 
say through life, by word and by deed, Delenda 
est Anglia Yictrix! — that one purpose of malice, 

25 faithfully pursued, has quartered some people 
upon our national funds of homage as by a per- 
petual annuity. Better than an inheritance of 
service rendered to England herself has sometimes 
proved the most insane hatred to England. Hyder 

30 Ali, even his son Tippoo, though so far inferior, 



40 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

and Xapoleon, have all benefited by this disposi- 
tion amongst ourselves to exaggerate the merit of 
diabolic enmity. Xot one of these men was ever 
capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an 
enemy (what do you say to that, reader?) ; and 5 
yet, in their behalf, we consent to forget, not their 
crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous 
bigotry and anti-magnanimous egotism — for na- 
tionality it was not. Suffren, and some half dozen 
of other French nautical heroes, because rightly ^ 
they did us all the mischief they could (which 
was really great), are names justly reverenced in 
England. On the same principle. La Pucelle 
d'Orleans, the victorious enemy of England, has 
been destined to receive her deepest commemora- 15 
tion from the magnanimous justice of English- 
men. 

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but 
according to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as 
M. Michelet asserts, Jean) D'Arc, was born at 20 
Domremy, a village on the marshes of Lorraine 
and Champagne, and dependent upon the town of 
Yaucouleurs. I have called her a Lorrainer, not 
simply because the word is prettier, but iDCcause 
Champagne too odiously reminds us English of 25 
what are for us imaginary wines — which, un- 
doubtedly. La Pucelle tasted as rarely as we Eng- 
lish: we English, because the champagne of Lon- 
don is chiefly grown in Devonshire; La Pucelle, 
because the champagne of Champagne never, by so 



JOAN OF ABC. 41 

any chance, flowed into the fountain of Domremy, 
from which only she drank. M. Michelet will 
have her to be a Champenoise, and for no better 
reason than that she "took after her father/' who 

5 happened to be a Champcnois. 

These disputes, however, turn on refinements 
too nice. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and 
like other frontiers, produced a mixed race, repre- 
senting the cis and the ti-ans. A river (it is true) 

10 formed the boundary line at this point — the river 
Meuse ; and that, in old days, might have divided 
the populations, but m these days it did not; 
there were bridges, there were ferries, and wed- 
dings crossed from the right bank to the left. 

15 Here lay two great roads, not so much for travel- 
ers that were few, as for armies that were too 
many by half. These two roads, one of which was 
the great highroad between France and Germany, 
decussated at this very point; which is a learned 

20 way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's 
Cross, or letter X- I hope the compositor will 
choose a good large X ; in which case the point 
of intersection, the locus of conflux and intersec- 
tion for these four diverging arms, will finish the 

25 reader's geographical education, by showing him 
to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy 
stood. These roads, so grandly situated, as great 
trunk arteries between two mighty realms, and 
haunted forever by wars or rumors of wars, de- 

■30 cussated (for anything I know to the contrary) 



42 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window ; one 
rolling away to the right, past M. D'Arc's old 
barn, and the other unaccountably preferring to 
sweep round that odious man's pig-sty to the 
left. ' 5 

On whichever side of the border chance had 
thrown Joanna, the same love to France would 
have been nurtured. For it is a strange fact, 
noticed by M. Michelet and others, that the Dukes 
of Bar and Lorraine had for generations pursued lo 
the policy of eternal warfare with France on their 
own account, yet also of eternal amity and league 
with France in case anybody else presumed to at- 
tack her. Let peace settle upon France, and be- 
fore long you might rely upon seeing the little is 
vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. 
Let France be assailed by a formidable enemy, 
and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insist- 
ing on having his own throat cut in support of 
France; which favor accordingly was cheerfully 20 
granted to him in three great successive battles : 
twice by the English, viz., at Crecy and Agincourt, 
once by the Sultan at Nicopolis. 

This sympathy with France during great 
eclipses, in those that during ordinary seasons 25 
were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla 
inroads, strengthened the natural piety to France 
of those that were confessedly the children of her 
own house. The outposts of France, as one may 
call the great frontier provinces, were of all lo- 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 43 

calities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lvs. To 
witness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion 
to these lilies of the little fierv cousin that in 
gentler weather was forever tilting at the breast 
5 of France, could not but fan the zeal of France's 
legitimate daughters; whilst to occupy a post of 
honor on the frontiers against an old hereditary 
enemy of France would naturally stimulate this 
zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of 

10 danger always threatening, and of hatred always 
smoldering. That great four-headed road was a 
perpetual memento to patriotic ardor. To say 
''This way lies the road to Paris, and that other 
way to Aix-la-Chapelle ; this to Prague, that to 

15 Vienna,^' nourished the warfare of the heart by 
daily ministrations of sense. The eye that watched 
for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile 
frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of 
wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations 

20 to centers so remote, into a manual of patriotic 

duty. 
\ The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was 
full of profound suggestions to a heart that lis- 
tened for the stealthy steps of change and fear 

25 that too surely were in motion. But, if the place 
were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was 
far more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers 
was hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark 
with sullen fermenting of storms that had been 

30 gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The 



4-4 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had 
reopened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poic- 
tiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry 
of France, had, before Agincourt occurred, been 
tranquilized by more than half a century; but 5 
this resurrection of their trumpet wails made 
the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes 
take their stations as parts in one drama. The 
graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed to 
fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed lo 
their own. The monarchy of France labored in 
extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting 
with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of 
the poor king (Charles VI.) falling in at such a 
crisis, like the case of women laboring in child- 15 
birth during the storming of a city, trebled the 
awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of 
the incident which had immediately occasioned 
the explosion of this madness — the case of a man 
unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, lo 
coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his 
hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking 
him for a moment to say, "Oh, king, thou art be- 
trayed," and then vanishing, no man knew 
whither, as he had appeared for no man knew 25 
what — fell in with the universal prostration of 
mind that laid France on her knees, as before the 
slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. 
The famines, the extraordinary diseases, the in- 
surrections of the peasantry up and down Europe 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 45 

— these were chords struck from the same mys- 
terious harp; but these were transitory chords. 
There had been others of deeper and more omi- 
nous sound. The termination of the Crusades, the 

5 destruction of the Templars, the Papal interdicts, 
the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of 
Anjou, and by the Emperor — these were full of 
a more permanent significance. But, since then, 
the colossal figure of feudalism was seen stand- 

10 ing, as it were, on tiptoe, at Crecy, for flight from 
earth: that was a revolution unparalleled; yet tliat 
was a trifle by comparison with the more fearful 
revolutions that were mining below the Church. 
By her own internal schisms, by the abominable 

15 spectacle of a double Pope — so that no man, ex- 
cept through political bias, could even guess which 
was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature 
of Hell — the Church was rehearsing, as in still 
earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those vast 

20 rents in her foundations which no man should 
ever heal. 

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland 
in the skies that to the scientific gazer first caught 
the colors of the new morning in advance. But 

25 the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms 
overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even 
upon those that could not distinguish the tenden- 
cies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, 
not her own age alone, as affected by its imme- 

30 diate calamities, that lay with such weight upon 



46 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in 
a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a 
century back, and drawing nearer continually to 
some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were 
heard roaring ahead; and signs were seen far 5 
back, by help of old men's memories, which an- 
swered secretly to signs now coming forward on 
the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not 
wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with 
such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic lo 
visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices 
whispered to her forever the duty, self-imposed, of 
delivering France. Five years she listened to these 
monitory voices with internal struggles. At lengtli 
she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and 15 
she left her home forever in order to present her- 
self at the dauphin's court. 

The education of this poor girl w^as mean ac- 
cording to the present standard : was ineffably 
grand, according to a purer philosophic standard : 20 
and only not good for our age because for us it 
would be unattainable. She read nothing, for 
she could not read; but she had heard others read 
parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept in 
sympathy with the sad "Misereres" of the Eomish 25 
Church; she rose to heaven with the glad trium- 
phant "Te Deums" of Eome; she drew her com- 
fort and her vital strength from the rites of the 
same Church. But, next after these spiritual ad- 
vantages, she owed most to the advantages of her 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 47 

situation. The fountain of Domremy was on 
the brink of a boundless forest ; and it was 
haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish 
priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once 

5 a year, in order to keep them in any decent 
bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statisti- 
cal view : certain weeds mark poverty in the soil ; 
fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf 
retires before cities does the fairy sequester her- 

10 self from the haunts of the licensed victualer. A 
village is too much for her nervous delicacy; at 
most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. 
We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and 
extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in 

15 what strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, 
and, by a satisfactory consequence, how thinly 
sown with men and women must have been that 
region even in its inhabited spots. But the forests 
of Domremy — those were the glories of the land: 

20 for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient 
secrets that towered into tragic strength. ''Ab- 
beys there were, and abbey windows" — ''like 
Moorish temples of the Hindoos" — that exercised 
even princely power both in Lorraine and in the 

25 German Diets. These had their sweet bells that 
pierced the forests for many a league at matins 
or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few 
enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, 
so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of 

30 the region ; yet many enough to spread a network 



48 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

or awning of Christian sanctity over what else 
might have seemed a heathen wilderness. This 
sort of religious talisman being secured^ a man 
the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or 
the reader) becomes armed into courage to wan- 5 
der for days in their sylvan recesses. The moun- 
tains of the Yosges, on the eastern frontier of 
France, have never attracted much notice from 
Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, 
when they fell within Xapoleon's line of defense lo 
against the Allies. But the}' are interesting for 
this amongst other features, that they do not, like 
some loftier ranges, repel woods; the forests and 
the hills are on sociable terms. "Live and let 
live" is their motto. For this reason, in part, 15 
these tracts in Lorraine were a favorite hunting- 
ground with tlie Carlovingian princes. About six 
hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charle- 
magne was known to have hunted there. That, of 
itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of 20 
a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, also, 
were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those 
mysterious fawns tliat tempted solitary hunters 
into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was 
seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who 25 
was already nine hundred years old, but possibly 
a hundred or two more, when met by Charle- 
magne ; and the thing was put beyond doubt by 
the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe 
Charlemagne knighted the stag ; and, if ever he is 30 



JOAN OF AEG. 49 

met again by a king, he ought to be made an earl, 
or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. 
Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all these 
things : my own opinion varies. On a fine breezy 

5 forenoon I am audaciously skeptical ; but as twi- 
light sets in my credulity grows steadily, till it 
becomes equal to anything that could be desired. 
And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that, 
outside of these very forests, they laughed loudly 

10 it all the dim tales connected with their haunted 
solitudes, but, on reaching a spot notoriously 
eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with 
Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be 
said on both sides. 

15 Such traditions, or any others that (like the 
stag) connect distant generations with each other, 
are, for that cause, sublime; and the sense of the 
shadowy, connected with such appearances that 
reveal themselves or not according to circum- 

20 stances, leaves a coloring of sanctity over ancient 
forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the 
legend as a fact. 

But, apart from all distinct stories of that 
order, in any solitary frontier between two great 

25 empires — as here, for instance, or in the desert 
between Syria and the Euphrates — there is an in- 
evitable tendency, in minds of any deep sensibil- 
ity, to people the solitudes with phantom images 
of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, there- 

30 fore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess. 



50 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

would be led continually to brood over the politi- 
cal condition of h(?r country by the traditions of 
the past no less than by the mementoes of the 
Jocal present. 

^I. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was 5 
not a shepherdess. I beg his pardon; she was. 
What he rests upon I guess pretty well : it is the 
evidence of a woman called Haumette, the most 
confidential friend of Joanna. Now, she is a good 
witness, and a good girl, and I like her ; for she lo 
makes a natural and affectionate report of 
Joanna's ordinary life. But still, however good 
she may be as a witness, Joanna is better; and 
she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls herself in 
the Latin report Bergereta. Even Haumette con- is 
fesses that Joanna tended sheep in her girlhood. 
And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were taking 
coffee alone with me this very evening (February 
12, 1847) — in which there would be no subject 
for scandal or for maiden blushes, because I am 20 
an intense philosopher, and Miss H. would bo 
hard upon 450 years old — she would admit the 
following comment upon her evidence to be right. 
A Frenchman, about forty years ago — M. Simond, 
in his "Travels" — mentions accidentally the fol- 25 
lowing hideous scene as one steadily observed and 
watched by himself in chivalrous France not very 
long before the French Eevolution : A peasant was 
plowing; and the team that drew his plow was a 
donkey and a woman. Both were regularly bar- 30 



JOAN OF AEC. 51 

ncssed ; both pulled alike. This is bad enough ; 
but tlie Frenchman adds that, in distributing his 
lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being 
impartial; or, if either of the yokefellows had a 
5 right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. 
Now, in any country where such degradation of 
females could be tolerated by the state of manners, 
a woman of delicacy would shrink from acknowl- 
edging, either for herself or her friend, that she 

10 had ever been addicted to any mode of labor not 
strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself 
a prandial servant, she would be sensible that this 
confession extended by probability in the hearer's 
thoughts to the having incurred indignities of this 

15 horril)le kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more 
dignified for Joanna to have been darning the 
etockings of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, 
than keeping sheep, lest she might then be sus- 
pected of having ever done something worse. But, 

20 luckily, there was no danger of that: Joanna 
never was in service; and my opinion is that her 
father should have mended his own stockings, 
Bince probably he was the party to make the holes 
in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does — ■ 

25 meaning by that not myself, because, though 
probably a better man than D'Arc, I protest 
against doing anything of the kind. If I lived 
even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Fri- 
day must do all the darning, or else it must go 

SO undone. The better men that I meant were the 



52 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

sailors in the British navy, every man of whom 
mends his own stockings. Who else is to do it ? 
Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of 
the admiralty are under articles to darn for the 
navy ? 5 

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred 
of D'Arc is this: There was a story current in 
France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule 
the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long 
pedigrees and short rent rolls : viz., that a head lo 
of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was 
overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. 
Louis, ''Chevalier, as-tu donne an cochon a man- 
ger?'' Now, it is clearly made out by the sur- 
viving evidence that D'Arc would much have 15 
preferred continuing to say, ^'Ma fille, as-tu don?i6 
au cochon a manger f to saying, "Pucelle d' Or- 
leans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lysf" There is an 
old English copy of verses which argues thus : 

If the man that turnips cries 20 

Cry not when his father dies, 

Then 'tis plain the man had rather 

Have a turnip than his father. 

I cannot say that the logic of these verses was 
ever entirely to my satisfaction. I do not see my 35 
way through it as clearly as could be wished. But 
I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and 
the result is — that he would greatly have pre- 
ferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the 



JOAN OF AEC. 53 

saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the 
Oriflamme of France. 

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that 
the title of Virgin or Pucelle had in itself, and 

5 apart from the miraculous stories about her, a 
secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan 
chiefs of that period; for in such a person they 
saw a representative manifestation of the Virgin 
Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown 

la steadily upon the popular heart. 

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the 
dauphin (Charles VII.) amongst three hundred 
lords and knights, I am surprised at the credulity 
which could ever lend itself to that theatrical jug- 

15 gle. Who admires more than myself the sublime 
enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this 
pure creature ? But I am far from admiring stage 
artifices which not La Pucelle, but the court, must 
have arranged; nor can surrender myself to the 

20 conjurer's legerdemain, such as may be seen every 
day for a shilling. Southey's "Joan of Arc'' was 
published in 1796. Twenty years after, talking 
with Southey, I was surprised to find him still 
owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on 

25 her detection of the dauphin. The story, for the 
benefit of the reader new to the case, was this : La 
Pucelle was first made known to the dauphin, and 
presented to his court, at Chinon; and here came 
her first trial. By way of testing her supernatural 

30 pretensions, she was to find out the royal person- 



«% 54 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

age among the whole ark of clean and unclean 
creatures. Failing in this coup d'essai, she would 
not simply disappoint many a beating heart in 
the glittering crowd that on different motives 
yearned for her success, but she would ruin her- 5 
self, and, as the oracle within had told her, would, 
by ruining herself, ruin France. Our own Sov- 
ereign Lady Victoria rehearses annually a trial 
not so severe in degree, but the same in kind. She 
^'pricks" for sheriffs. Joanna pricked for a king, lo 
But observe the difference : our own Lady pricks 
for two men out of three ; Joanna for one man out 
of three hundred. Happy Lady of the Islands 
and the Orient ! — she can go astray in her choice 
only by one-half : to the extent of one-half she 15 
must have the satisfaction of being right. And 
yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a 
boundless discretion, permit me, Liege Lady, with 
all loyalty, to submit that now and then you prick 
with your pin the wrong man. But the poor 20 
child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of 
a dazzling court — not because dazzling (for in 
visions she had seen those that were more so), but 
because some of them wore a scofhng smile on 
their features — how should she throw her line into 25 
so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a 
gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as 
kings in dress ! Nay, even more than any true 
king would have done : for, in Southey's version 



JOAN OF AEC. 55 

of the story, the dauphin says, by way of trying 
the virgin's magnetic sympathy with royalty, 

On the throne, 
I the while mingling with the menial throng, 
5 Some courtier shall be seated. 

This usurper is even crowned : "the jeweled crown 
shines on a meniaFs head." But, really, that is 
''un pen fort"; and the mob of spectators might 
raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw 

10 upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were 
not grazing the shins of treason. For the dau- 
phin could not lend more than belonged to him. 
According to the popular notion, he had no crown 
for himself; consequently none to lend, on any 

15 pretense whatever, until the consecrated Maid 
should take him to Rheims. This was the popular 
notion in France. But certainly it was the 
dauj^hin's interest to support the popular notion, 
as he meant to use the services of Joanna. For if 

20 he were king already, what was it that she could 
do for him beyond Orleans ? That is to say, what 
more than a merely mUUarij service could she ren- 
der him? And, above all, if he were king without 
a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred 

25 ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by 
celerity above his competitor, the English boy? 
Now was to be a race for a coronation : he that 
should win that race carried the superstition of 
France along with him : he that should first be 



56 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

drawn from the ovens of Eheims was under that 
superstition baked into a king. 

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to prac- 
tice as a warrior, was put through her manual and 
platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar 5 
of six eminent men in Avigs. According to Southey 
(v. 393, bk. iii., in the original edition of his 
"Joan of Arc/') she "appalled the doctors." It's 
not easy to do that : but they had some reason to 
feel bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel lo 
bothered who, upon proceeding to dissect a sub- 
ject, should find the subject retaliating as a dis- 
sector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever 
made the speech to them which occupies v. 354- 
391, bk. iii. It is a double impossibility: 1st, be- 15 
cause a piracy from TindaFs "Christianity as old 
as the Creation" — a piracy a parte ante, and by 
three centuries; 2d, it is quite contrary to the 
evidence on Joanna's trial. Southey's "Joan" of 
A. D. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol) tells the doctors, 20 
amongst other secrets, that she never in her life 
attended — 1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental 
Table; nor 3d, Confession. In the meantime, all 
this deistical confession of Joanna's, besides being 
suicidal for the interest of her cause, is opposed to 25 
the depositions upon both trials. The very best 
witness called from first to last deposes that 
Joanna attended these rites of her Church even 
too often ; was taxed with doing so ; and, by blush- 
ing, owned the charge as a fact, though certainly 30 



JOAN OF AKC. 57 

not as a fault. Joanna was a girl of natural piety, 
that saw God in forests and hills and fountains, 
but did not the less seek him in chapels and con- 
secrated oratories. 

5 This peasant girl was self-educated through her 
own natural meditativeness. If the reader turns 
to that divine passage in 'Taradise Eegained" 
which ^lilton has put into the mouth of our Sa- 
viour when first entering the wilderness, and mus- 

10 ing upon the tendency of those great impulses 
growing within himself — 

Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once 
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider 
What from within I feel myself, and hear 

15 What from without comes often to my ears, 

111 sorting with my present state compared! 
When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, 

20 What might be public good; myself I thought 
Born to that end 

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which 
brooded over the heart of Joanna in early girl- 
hood, when the wings were budding that should 
25 carry her from Orleans to Eheims ; when the 
' golden chariot was dimly revealing itself that 
should carry her from the kingdom of France De- 
livered to the Eternal Kingdom. 

It is not requisite for the honor of Joanna, nor 
30 is there in this place room to pursue her brief 



58 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCE Y. 

career of action. That, though wonderful, forms 
the earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is 
the saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, 
and execution. It is unfortunate, therefore, for 
Southey's "Joan of Arc" (which, however, should 5 
always be regarded as a juvenile effort), that pre- 
cisely when her real glory begins the poem ends. 
But this limitation of the interest grew, no doubt, 
from the constraint inseparably attached to the 
law of epic unity. Joanna's history bisects into lo 
two opposite hemispheres, and both could not 
have been presented to the eye in one poem, unless, 
by sacrificing all unity of theme, or else by in- 
volving the earlier half, as a narrative episode, in 
the latter ; which, however, might have been done, 15 
for it might have been communicated to a fellow- 
prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. It is 
sufficient, as concerns this section of Joanna's life, 
to say that she fulfilled, to the height of her 
promises, the restoration of the prostrate throne. 20 
France had become a province of England, and 
for the ruin of both, if such a yoke could be main- 
tained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion caused 
the English energy to droop; and that critical 
opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding fe- 25 
licity of audacity and suddenness (that were in 
themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge 
of French native resources, for rekindling the na- 
tional pride, and for planting the dauphin once 
more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 59 

had been on the point of giving up the struggle 
with the Enghsh, distressed as they were, and of 
flying to the south of France. She taught him to 
blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Or- 
5 leans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the 
issue of the war, and then beleaguered by the 
English with an elaborate application of engineer- 
ing skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the 
city after sunset on the 29th of April, she sang 

10 mass on Sunday, May 8, for the entire disap- 
pearance of the besieging force. On the 29th of 
June she fought and gained over the English the 
decisive battle of Patay; on the 9th of July she 
took Troves by a coup-de-main from a mixed gar- 

15 rison of English and Burgundians; on the loth of 
that month she carried the dauphin into Rheims; 
on Sunday the 17th she crowned him; and there 
she rested from her labor of triumph. All that 
was to be done she had now accomplished; what 

20 remained was — to sutfer. 

All this forward movement was her own ; ex- 
cepting one man, the whole council was against 
her. Her enemies were all that drew power from 
earth. Her supporters were her own strong en- 

25 thusiasm, and the headlong contagion by which 
she carried this sublime frenzy into the hearts of 
women, of soldiers, and of all who lived by labor. 
Henceforward she was thwarted; and the worst 
error that she committed was to lend the sanction 

30 of her presence to counsels which she had ceased 



CO SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

to approve. But she had now accomplished the 
capital objects which her own visions had dictated. 
These involved all the rest. Errors were now less 
important; and doubtless it had now become more 
difficult for herself to pronounce authentically 5 
what were errors. The noble girl had achieved, 
as by a rapture of motion, the capital end of 
clearing out a free space around her sovereign, 
giving him the power to move his arms with ef- 
fect, and, secondly, the inappreciable end of win- lo 
ning for that sovereign what seemed to all France 
the heavenly ratification of his rights, by crown- 
mg him with the ancient solemnities. She had 
made it impossible for the English now to step be- 
fore her. They were caught in an irretrievable 15 
blunder, owing partly to discord amongst the 
uncles of Henry VI., partly to a want of funds, 
but partly to the very impossibility which they be- 
lieved to press with tenfold force upon any French 
attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed at such 20 
a thought; and, whilst they laughed, she did it. 
Henceforth the single redress for the English of 
this capital oversight, but which never could have 
redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint 
the coronation of Charles YII. as the work of a 25 
witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Mich- 
elet is so happy to believe), was the moving prin- 
ciple in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. 
Unless they unhinged the force of the first corona- 
tion in the popular mind by associating it with 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 



61 



power given from hell, they felt that the scepter 
of the invader was broken. 

But she, the child that at nineteen had wrought 
wonders so great for France, was she not elated ? 
5 Did she not lose, as men so often have lost, all 
sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle 
of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. 
During the progress of her movement, and in the 
center of ferocious struggles, she had manifested 
10 the temper of her feelings by the pity which she 
had everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. 
She forwarded to the English leaders a touching 
invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, 
in a common crusade against infidels— thus open- 
is ing the road for a soldierly retreat. She inter- 
posed to protect the captive or the wounded; she 
mourned over the excesses of her countrymen; 
she thew herself off her horse to kneel by the 
dying English soldier, and to comfort him with 
20 such ministrations, physical or spiritual, as his 
situation allowed. "Xolebat," says the evidence, 
"uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere.'' She 
sheltered the English that invoked her aid in her 
own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched 
25 on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that 
had died without confession. And, as regarded 
herself, her elation expressed itself thus: on the 
day when she had finished her work, she wept ; for 
she knew that, when her triumphal task was done, 
30 her end must be approaching. Her aspirations 



62 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

pointed only to a place which seemed to her more 
than usually full of natural piety, as one in which 
it would give her pleasure to die. And she ut- 
tered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that in- 
expressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half 5 
fantastic, a broken prayer that God would return 
her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, 
and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. 
It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid 
a necessity upon every human heart to seek for lo 
rest and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it 
was a half fantastic prayer, because, from child- 
hood upward, visions that she had no power to 
mistrust, and the voices which sounded in her ear 
forever, had long since persuaded her mind that 15 
for her no such prayer could be granted. Too 
well she felt that her mission must be worked out 
to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All 
went wrong from this time. She herself had cre- 
ated the funds out of which the French restora- 2a 
tion should grow; but she was not suffered to 
witness their development or their prosperous ap- 
plication. More than one military plan was en- 
tered upon which she did not approve. But she 
still continued to expose her person as before. 25 
Severe wounds had not taught her caution. And 
at length, in a sortie from Compiegne (whether 
through treacherous collusion on the part of her 
own friends is doubtful to this day), she was 



JOAN OF AEG. (33 

made prisoner by the Burgundians, and finally 
surrendered to the English. 

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of 
course under English influence, was conducted in 
5 chief by the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a 
Frenchman, sold to English interests, and hoping, 
by favor of the English leaders, to reach the high- 
est preferment. -'Bishop that art. Archbishop 
that Shalt be. Cardinal that mayest be,'' were the 
1(J words that sounded continually in his ear; and 
doubtless a whisper of visions still higher, of a 
triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, 
sometimes stole into his heart. M. Michelet is 
anxious to keep us in mind that this bishop was 
li but an agent of the English. True. But it does 
not better the case for his countryman that, being 
an accomplice in the crime, making himself the 
leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, 
he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and 
20 with the conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never 
from the foundations of the earth was there such 
a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty 
of defense and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, 
child of France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trod- 
25 den underfoot by all around thee, how I honor 
thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, 
and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran 
before France and laggard Europe by many a 
century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, 
30 and making dumb the oracles of falsehood ! Is it 



C4 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civiliza- 
tion, that, even at this day, France exhibits the 
horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner 
against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into 
treacherous conclusions against his own head; 5 
using the terrors of their power for extorting con- 
fessions from the frailty of hope; nay (which is 
worse), using the blandishments of condescension 
and snaky kindness for thawing into compliances 
of gratitude those whom they had failed to freeze i*^ 
into terror ? Wicked judges ! barbarian jurispru- 
dence ! — that, sitting in your own conceit on the 
summits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn 
the first principles of criminal justice — sit ye 
humbly and with docility at the feet of this girl i5 
from Domremy, that tore your webs of cruelty 
into shreds and dust. "Would you examine me as 
a witness against myself?" was the question by 
which many times she defied their arts. Contin- 
ually she showed that their interrogations were 20 
irrelevant to any business before the court, or that 
entered into the ridiculous charges against her. 
General questions were proposed to her on points 
of casuistical divinity; two-edged questions, which 
not one of themselves could have answered, with- 25 
out, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as 
then interpreted), or, on the other, in some pre- 
sumptuous expression of self-esteem. Next came 
a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with an 
objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would 30 



JOAN OF AKC. (55 

tax every one of its miracles with imsoundness. 
The monk had the excuse of never having read 
the Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse; and 
it makes one blush for him, as a philosopher, to 
5 find him describing such an argument as 
"weighty," whereas it is but a varied expression 
of rude Mohammedan metaphysics. Her answer 
to this, if there were room to place the whole in 
a clear light, was as shattering as it was rapid. 
10 Another thought to entrap her by asking what 
language the angelic visitors of her solitude had 
talked — as though heavenly counsels could want 
polyglot interpreters for every word, or that God 
needed language at all in whispering thoughts to 
15 a human heart. Then came a worse devil, who 
asked her whether the Archangel Michael had ap- 
peared naked. Xot comprehending the vile in- 
sinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggested to her 
simplicity that it might be the costliness of suit- 
20 able robes Avhich caused the demur, asked them if 
they fancied God, who clothed the flowers of the 
valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. 
The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tender- 
ness, but the disappointment of her judges makes 
25 one laugh exultingh\ Others succeeded by 
troops, who upbraided her with leaving her father ; 
as if that greater Father, whom she believed her- 
self to have been serving, did not retain the power 
of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said 



CG SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

that for a less cause than martyrdom man and 
woman should leave both father and mother. 

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been 
long proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to 
cause a belief that she had been poisoned. It was 5 
not poison. Nobody had any interest in hasten- 
ing a death so certain. M. Michelet, whose sym- 
pathies with all feelings are so quick that one 
would gladly see them always as justly directed, 
reads the case most truly. Joanna had a twofold lo 
malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the 
complaint called homesicl'ness. The cruel nature 
of her imprisonment, and its length, could not 
but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness and 
in chains (for chained she was), to Domremy. 15 
And the season, which was the most heavenly pe- 
riod of the spring, added stings to this yearning. 
That was one of her maladies — nostalgia, as medi- 
icine calls it; the other was weariness and ex- 
haustion from daily combats with malice. Sho 20 
saw that everybody hated her and thirsted for her 
blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that 
would have pitied her profoundly, as regarded all 
political charges, had their natural feelings 
warped by the belief that she had dealings with 25 
fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that 
was not the misery ! the misery was that this con- 
summation could not be reached without so much 
intermediate strife, as if she were contending for 
some chance (where chance was none) of happi- 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 67 

ness. or were dreaming for a moment of escaping 
the inevitable. Why, then, did she contend? 
Knowing that she would reap nothing from an- 
swering her persecutors, why did she not retire by 

5 silence from the superfluous contest ? It was be- 
cause her quick and eager loyalty to truth would 
not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds which 
she could expose, but others, even of candid lis- 
teners, perhaps, could not; it was through that 

10 imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her 
to submit meekly and without a struggle to her 
punishment, but taught her not to submit — no, 
not for a moment — to calumny as to facts, or to 
misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were 

15 secretaries all around the court taking down her 
words. That was meant for no good to her. But 
the end does not always correspond to the mean- 
ing. And Joanna might say to herself, ^'These 
words that will be used against me to-morrow and 

20 the next day, perhaps, in some nobler generation, 
may rise again for my justification." Yes, Joanna, 
they are rising even now in Paris, and for more 
than justification! 

"Woman, sister, there are some things which you 

25 do not execute as well as your brother, man ; no, 
nor ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether 
you will ever produce a great poet from your 
choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael 
Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. 

30 Bv which last is meant — not one who depends 



6S SELECTIONS FEOM DE QIJINCEY. 

simply on an infinite memory, but also on an in- 
finite and electrical power of combination; bring- 
ing together from the four winds, like the angel 
of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead 
men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If 5 
you can create yourselves into any of these great 
creators, why have you not? 

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to 
find a Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, 
cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depth? lo 
of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one 
thing as well as the best of us men — a greater 
thing than even Milton is known to have done, or 
Michael Angelo; you can die grandly, and as god- 
desses would die, were goddesses mortal. If any 15 
distant worlds (which 7nay be the case) are so 
far ahead of us Tellurians in optical resources as 
to see distinctly through their telescopes all that 
we do on earth, what is the grandest sight to which 
we ever treat them? St. Peter's at Eome, do you 20 
fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps 
the Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend; suggest 
something better; these are baubles to them; they 
see in other worlds, in their own, far better toys 
of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are 25 
nothing. Do you give it up? The finest thing, 
then, we have to show them is a scaffold on the 
morning of execution. I assure you there is a 
strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on 
any such morning, of those who happen to find so 



JOAN OF ARC. 69 

themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a 
peep at us. How, then, if it be announced in 
some such telescopic world by those who make a 
livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers, 
5 whose language they have long since deciphered, 
that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is 
a woman? How, if it be published in that dis- 
tant world that the sufferer wears upon her head, 
in the e3'es of many, the garlands of martyrdom ? 

10 How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the 
widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, 
and presenting to the morning air her head, 
turned gray by sorrow — daughter of Ciesars 
kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as 

15 one that worships death? How, if it were the 
noble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of 
youth, that with the loveliest of persons, that with 
homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she 
turned her face to scatter them — homage that fol- 

20 lowed those smiles as surely as the carols of birds, 
after showers in spring, follow the reappearing 
sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills — 
yet thought all these things cheaper than the dust 
upon her sandals, in comparison of deliverance 

25 from hell for her dear suffering France ! Ah ! these 
were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing 
people in distant worlds ; and some, perhaps, would 
suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because 
they could not testify their wrath, could not bear 

30 witness to the strength of love and to the fury of 



70 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

hatred that burned within them at such scenes, 
could not gather into golden urns some of that 
glorious dust which rested in the catacombs of 
earth. 

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 5 
1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the 
Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was 
conducted before midday, guarded by eight hun- 
dred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, 
constructed of wooden billets supported by occa- lo 
sional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by 
hollow spaces in every direction for the creation 
of air currents. The pile "struck terror," says M. 
Michelet, "by its height"; and, as usual, the Eng- 
lish purpose in this is viewed as one of pure 15 
malignity. But there are two ways of explaining 
all that. It is probable that the purpose was mer- 
ciful. On the circumstances of the execution I 
shall not linger. Yet, to mark the almost fatal 
felicity of M. Michelet in finding out whatever 20 
may injure the English name, at a moment when 
every reader will be interested in Joanna's personal 
appearance, it is really edifying to notice the in- 
genuity by which he draws into light from a dark 
corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, 25 
though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing 
one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a 
chronicler, but little read, being a stiffnecked John 
Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna 
should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a 30 



JOAN OF ARC. 71 

satisfactory solution of that particular merit. 
Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler some^ 
what later, every way more important, and at one 
time universally read, has given a very pleasing 
5 testimony to the interesting character of Joanna's 
person and engaging manners. Neither of these 
men lived till the following century, so that per- 
sonally this evidence is none at all. Grafton sul- 
lenly and carelessly believed as he wished to be- 

lolieve; Holinshead took pains to inquire, and re- 
ports undoubtedly the general impression of 
France. But I cite the case as illustrating M. 
Michelet's candor. 

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, 

fa unless with more space than I can now command, 
I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear to 
injure by imperfect report, a martyrdom which to 
myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet, for a 
purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at M. 

20 ^lichelet — viz., to convince him that an English- 
man is capable of thinking more highly of La 
Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen — I 
shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in 
Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or 

25 two in that of the bystanders, which authorize me 
in questioning an opinion of his upon this 
martyr's firmness. The reader ought to be re- 
minded that Joanna D'Arc was subjected to an un- 
usually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder 

30 Christian martyrs had not much to fear of per- 



72 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

sonal rancor. The martjT was chiefly regarded as 
the enemy of Ceesar; at times, also, where any 
knowledge of the Christian faith and morals ex- 
isted, with the enmity that arises spontaneously 
in the worldly against the spiritual. But the 5 
martyr, though disloyal, was not supposed to be 
therefore anti-national; and still less was indi- 
vidually hateful. What was hated (if anything) 
belonged to his class, not to himself separately. 
Xow, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated person- lo 
ally, and in Eouen on national grounds. Hence 
there would be a certainty of calumny arising 
against her such as would not affect martyrs in 
general. That being the case, it would follow of 
necessity that some people would impute to her a 15 
willingness to recant. Xo innocence could escape 
that. Xow, had she really testified this willing- 
ness on the scaffold, it would have argued noth- 
ing at all but the weakness of a genial nature 
shrinking from the instant approach of torment. 20 
And those will often pity that weakness most Avho, 
in their own persons, would yield to it least. 
Meantime, there never was a calumny uttered that 
drew less support from the recorded circum- 
stances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and 25 
it has a weiglit of contradicting testimony to stem. 
And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at times 
seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I 
do, is the one sole writer amongst her friends who 
lends pome countenance to this odious slander. 30 



JOAN OF AEG. 73 

His words are that, if she did not utter this word 
recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart, 
"Whether she said the word is uncertain; but 1 
affirm that she tli ought it/' 
5 Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense 
of the word ''thought" applicable to the case. Here 
is France caluminating La Pucelle; here is Eng- 
land defending her. M. ]\Iichelet can only mean 
that, on a priori principles, every woman must be 

10 presumed liable to such a weakness ; that Joanna 
was a woman; ergo, that she was liable to such a 
weakness. That is, he only supposes her to have 
uttered the word by an argument which presumes 
it impossible for anybody to have done otherwise. 

15 I, on the contrary, throw the onus of the argu- 
ment not on presumable tendencies of nature, but 
on the known facts of that morning's execution, 
as recorded by multitudes. What else, I demand, 
than mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of 

20 deportment, broke the vast line of battle then ar- 
rayed against her? What else but her meek, 
saintly demeanor won, from the enemies that till 
now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous 
admiration? "Ten thousand men," says M. 

25 iMichelet himself — "ten thousand men wept" ; and 
of these ten thousand the majority were political 
enemies knitted together by cords of superstition. 
What else was it but her constancy, united with 
her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic 

30 Endish soldier — who had sworn to throw a faE^o-ot 



74 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

on her scaffold as his tribute of abhorrence, that 
did so, that fulfilled his vow — suddenly to turn 
away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that 
he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven 
from the ashes where she had stood? What else 5 
drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for 
pardon to his share in the tragedy? And, if all 
this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of 
her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testi- 
monies against her. The executioner had been lo 
directed to apply his torch from below. He did 
so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in billowing 
volumes. A Dominican monk was then standing 
almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime 
office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted 15 
in his prayers. Even then, when the last enemy 
was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at 
that moment did this noblest of girls think only 
for him, the one friend that would not forsake 
her, and not for herself ; bidding him with her 20 
last breath to care for his own preservation, but 
to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest 
breath ascended in this sublime expression of self- 
oblivion, did not utter the v/ord recant either with 
her lips or in her heart. No ; she did not, though 25 
one should rise from the dead to swear it. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire 
upon a scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But, for 
the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes 



JOAN OF AEC. 75 

alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of 
death are opening, and flesh is resting from its 
struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer 
have the same truce from carnal torment; both 

5 sink together into sleep ; together both sometimes 
kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were 
gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd 
girl — when the pavilions of life were closing up 
their shadowy curtains about you — let us try, 

u through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the fly- 
ing features of your separate visions. 

The shepherd girl that had delivered France — 
she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at 
the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she en- 

15 tered her last dream — saw Domremy, saw the 
fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in 
which her childhood had wandered. That Easter 
festival which man had denied to her languishing 
heart — that resurrection of springtime, which the 

20 darkness of dungeons had intercepted from her, 
hungering after the glorious liberty of forests — 
were by God given back into her hands as jewels 
that had been stolen from her by robbers. With 
those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can 

25 stretch into ages), was given back to her by God 
the bliss of childhood. By special privilege for 
her might be created, in this farewell dream, a 
second childhood, innocent as the first; but not, 
like that, sad with the gloom of a fearful mission 

30 in the rear. This mission had now been fulfilled. 



76 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

The storm was weathered; the skirts even of that 
mighty storm were draAving of?. The blood that 
she was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears 
that she was to shed in secret had been paid to the 
last. The hatred to herself in all e_yes had been 5 
faced steadily, had been suffered, had been sur- 
vived. And in her last fight upon the scaffold she 
had triumphed gloriously; victoriously she had 
tasted the stings of death. For all, except this 
comfort from her farewell dream, she had died — lo 
died amid the tears of ten thousand enemies — 
died amid the drums and trumpets of armies — 
died amid peals redoubling upon peals, volleys 
upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of 
martyrs. 15 

Bishop of Beauvais ! because the guilt-burdened 
man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the 
inost frightful of his crimes, and because upon 
that fluctuating mirror — rising (like the mocking 
mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts) from the 20 
fens of death — most of all are reflected the sweet 
countenances which the man has laid in ruins; 
therefore I know, bishop, that you also, entering 
your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain, 
of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed it- 25 
self to your e3^es in pure morning dews; but 
neither dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse 
away the bright spots of innocent blood upon its 
surface. By the fountain, bishop, you saw a 
woman seated, that hid her face. But, as you 30 



JOAN OF AEG. 77 

draw near, the woman raises her wasted features. 
Would Domremy know them again for the 
features of her child? Ah, but you know them, 
bishop, well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was that 
5 which the servants, waiting outside the bishop's 
dream at his bedside, heard from his laboring 
heart, as at this moment he turned away from the 
fountain and the woman, seeking rest in the 
forests afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, 

10 whom once again he must behold before he dies. 
In the forests to which he prays for pit}^ will he 
find a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering 
of feet is there ! In glades where only wild deer 
should run armies and nations are assembling; 

15 towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms 
that belong to departed hours. There is the great 
English Prince, Eegent of France. There is my 
Lord of Winchester, the princely cardinal, that 
died and made no sign. There is the Bishop of 

20 Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of thickets. What 
building is that which hands so rapid are raising? 
Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the 
child of Domremy a second time? Xo; it is a 
tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nations 

25 stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my 
Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment- 
seat, and again number the hours for the inno- 
cent ? Ah, no ! he is the prisoner at the bar. 
Already all is waiting: the mighty audience is 

30 gathered, the Court is hurrying to their seats, the 



78 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, 
the judge is taking his place. Oh, but this is sud- 
den ! My lord, have you no counsel ? "Counsel 
I have none ; in heaven above, or on earth beneath, 
counselor there is none now that would take a 5 
brief from me : all are silent." Is it, indeed, come 
to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult is 
wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity; 
but yet I will search in it for somebody to take 
your brief ; I know of somebody that will be your lo 
counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domreijiy ? 
Who is she in bloody coronation robes from 
Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened 
flesh from walking the furnaces of Eouen? This 
is she, the shepherd girl, counselor that had none 15 
for herself, Whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She 
it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. 
She it is, bishop, that would plead for you ; yes, 
bishop, she — when heaven and earth are silent. 



THE EXGLISH MAIL COACH. 



Section I— The Glory of Motiox. 

Some twenty or more years before I matricu- 
lated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M. P. 
for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard 
to do on our little planet, the earth, however cheap 
5 they may be held by eccentric people in comets ; 
he had invented mail coaches, and he had married 
the daughter of a duke. He was, therefore, just 
twice as great a man as Galileo, who did certainly 
invent (or, which is the same thing, discover) the 

10 satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant 
to mail coaches in the two capital pretensions of 
speed and keeping time, but, on the other hand, 
who did not marry the daughter of a duke. 

These mail coaches, as organized by Mr. Palmer, 

i5 are entitled to a circumstantial notice from my- 
self, having had so large a share in developing the 
anarchies of my subsequent dreams; an agency 
which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity at 
that time unprecedented— for they first revealed 
79 



80 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

the glory of motion; 2d, through grand effects 
for the eye between lamplight and the darkness 
upon solitary roads; 3d, through animal beauty 
and power so often displayed in the class of horses 
selected for this mail service; 4th, through the 5 
conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in 
the midst of vast distances — of storms, of dark- 
ness, of danger — overruled all obstacles into one 
steady co-operation to a national result. For my 
own feeling, this post-office service spoke as by lo 
some mighty orchestra, where a thousand instru- 
ments, all disregarding each other, and so far in 
danger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to 
the supreme baton of some great leader, terminate 
in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, 15 
brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organization. 
But, finally, that particular element in this whole 
combination which m.ost impressed myself, and 
througli which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's 
mail-coach system tyrannizes over my dreams by 20 
terror and terrific beauty, lay in the awful poUti- 
cal mission which at that time it fulfilled. The 
mail coach it was that distributed over the face 
of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, 
the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Sala- 25 
manca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were the 
harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, 
redeemed the tears and blood in which they had 
been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so 
much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the so 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 81 

times as to confound battles such as these, which 
were gradually molding the destinies of Christen- 
dom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary war- 
fare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of 
5 national prowess. The victories of England in 
this stupendous contest rose of themselves as nat- 
ural "Te Deums" to heaven; and it was felt by 
the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis 
of general prostration, were not more beneficial to 
10 ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and 
to the nations of all western or central Europe, 
through whose pusillanimity it was that the 
French domination had prospered. 

The mail coach, as the national organ for pub- 
is lishing these mighty events, thus diffusively in- 
fluential, became itself a spiritualized and glori- 
fied object to an impassioned heart ; and naturally, 
in the Oxford of that day, all hearts were impas- 
sioned, as being all (or nearly all) in early man- 
20 hood. In most universities there is one single 
college; in Oxford there w^re five-and-twenty, all 
of which were peopled by young men, the elite of 
their own generation ; not boys, but men ; none 
under eighteen. In some of these many colleges 
25 the custom permitted the student to keep what 
are called "short terms"; that is, the four terms 
of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept 
by a residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one 
days, or thirteen weeks. Under this interrupted 
30 residence, it was possible that a student might 



go SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

have a reason for going down to his home four 
times in the year. This made eight journeys to 
and fro. But, as these homes lay dispersed 
through all the shires of the island, and most of 
us disdained all coaches except his majesty's mail, 5 
no city out of London could pretend to so exten- 
sive a connection with Mr. Palmer's establishment 
as Oxford. Three mails, at the least, I remember 
as passing every day through Oxford, and benefit- 
ing by my personal patronage — viz., the Worces- lo 
ter, the Gloucester, and the Holyhead mail. Nat- 
urally, therefore, it became a point of some in- 
terest with us, whose journeys revolved every six 
weeks on an average, to look a little into the 
executive details of the system. With some of 15 
these Mr. Palmer had no concern; they rested 
upon by-laws enacted by posting houses for their 
own benefit, and upon other by-laws, equally stern, 
enacted by the inside passengers for the illustra- 
tion of their own haughty exclusiveness. These 20 
last were of a nature to rouse our scorn; from 
which the transition was not very long to system- 
atic mutiny. Up to this time, say 1804, or 1805 
(the year of Trafalgar), it had been the fixed as- 
sumption of the four inside people (as an old tra- 25 
dition of all public carriages derived from the 
reign of Charles II.) that they, the illustrious 
quaternion, constituted a porcelain variety of the 
human race, whose dignity would have been com- 
promised by exchanging one word of civility with 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 83 

the three miserable delf-ware outside. Even to 
have kicked an outsider might have been held to 
attaint the foot concerned in that operation, so 
that, perhaps, it would have required an Act of 

5 Parliament to restore its purity of blood. "What 
words, then, could express the horror, and the 
sense of treason, in that case which had happened, 
where all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) 
made a vain attempt to sit down at the same 

10 breakfast table or dinner table with the conse- 
crated four? I myself witnessed such an attempt; 
and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman 
endeavored to soothe his three holy associates by 
suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for 

15 this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court 
would regard it as a case of lunacy or delirium 
tremens rather than of treason. England owes 
much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristo- 
cratic element in her social composition, when 

20 pulling against her strong democracy. I am not 
the man to laugh at it. But sometimes, undoubt- 
edly, it expressed itself in comic shapes. The 
course taken with the infatuated outsiders, in the 
particular attempt which I have noticed, was that 

25 the waiter, beckoning them away from the priv- 
ileged salJe a manger, sang out, "This way, my 
good men," and then enticed these good men away 
to the kitchen. But that plan had not always 
answered. Sometimes, though rarely, cases oc- 

30 curred where the intruders, being stronger than 



84 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

usual, or more vicious than usual, resolutely re- 
fused to budge, and so far carried their point as 
to have a separate table arranged for themselves 
in a corner of the general room. Yet, if an Indian 
screen could be found ample enough to plant them 5 
out from the very eyes of the high table, or dais, 
it then became possible to assume as a fiction of 
law that the three delf fellows, after all, were not 
present. They could be ignored by the porcelain 
men, under the maxim that objects not appearing lo 
and objects not existing are governed by the same 
logical construction. 

Such bemg at that time the usage of mail 
coaches, what was to be done by us of young Ox- 
ford ? We, the most aristocratic of people, who 15 
were addicted to the practice of looking down 
superciliously even upon the insides themselves as 
often very questionable characters — were we, by 
voluntarily going outside, to court indignities? If 
our dress and bearing sheltered us generally from 20 
the suspicion of being "raff" (the name at that 
period for '^snobs"), we really were such con- 
structively by the place we assumed. If we did 
not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we en- 
tered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the 25 
analogy of theaters was valid against us — where 
no man can complain of the annoyances incident 
to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in 
paying the higher price of the boxes. But the 
soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the 30 



THE ENGLISIf MAIL COACH. §5 

case of the theater, it cannot be pretended that the 
inferior situations have any separate attractions, 
unless the pit may be supposed to have an ad- 
vantage for the purposes of the critic or the 

5 dramatic reporter. But the critic or reporter is a 
rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is in the 
price. Now, on the contrar}^ the outside of the 
mail had its own incommunicable advantages. 
These we could not forego. The higher price we 

10 would willingly have paid, but not the price con- 
nected with the condition of riding inside; which 
condition we pronounced insufferable. The air, 
the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the 
horses, the elevation of seat ; these were what we 

15 required; but, above all, the certain anticipation 

of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving. 

Such was the difficulty which pressed us; and 

under the coercion of this difficulty we instituted 

a searching inquiry into the true quality and 

20 valuation of the different apartments about the 
mail. We conducted this inquiry on metaphysical 
principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily 
that the roof of the coach, which by some weak 
men had been called the attics, and by some the 

25 garrets, was in reality the drawing room ; in whicli 
drawing room the box was the chief ottoman or 
sofa ; whilst it appeared that the inside, which 
had been traditionally regarded as the only room 
tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal 

30 cellar in disguise. 



,80 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not 
long before struck the celestial intellect of China. 
Amongst the presents carried out by our first em- 
bassy to that country was a state coach. It had 
been specially selected as a personal gift by 5 
George III.; but the exact mode of using it was 
an intense mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, 
indeed (Lord Macartney), had made some im- 
perfect explanations upon this point; but, as His 
Excellency communicated these in a diplomatic lo 
whisper at the very moment of his departure, the 
celestial intellect was very feebly illuminated, and 
it became necessary to call a cabinet council on 
the grand state question, "Where was the Emperor 
to sit ?" The hammer cloth happened to be an- 15 
usually gorgeous; and, partly on that considera- 
tion, but partly also because the box offered the 
most elevated seat, was nearest to the moon, and 
undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by ac- 
clamation that the box was the imperial throne, 20 
and, for the scoundrel who drove — ^he might sit 
where he could find a perch. The horses, there- 
fore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial 
majesty ascended his new English throne under a 
flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the 25 
treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester 
on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and 
in the whole flowery people, constructively present 
by representation, there was but one discontented 
person, and that was the coachman. This 30 



THE ENGLLSPI MAIL COACH. S7 

mutinous individual audaciously shouted, "Where 
am / to sit?'' But the privy council, incensed by 
his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door and 
kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside 

5 places to himself ; but such is the rapacity of ambi- 
tion that he was still dissatisfied. "I say," he 
cried out in an extempore petition addressed to 
the emperor through the window — "I say, how 
am I to catch hold of the reins?" — "Anyhow," 

10 was the imperial answer; "don't trouble me, man, 
in my glory. How catch the reins ? Why, through 
the windows, through the keyholes — anyhow.'^ 
Finally this contumacious coachman lengthened 
the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins com- 

15 municating with the horses ; with these he drove 
as steadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The 
Emperor returned after the briefest of circuits ; he 
descended in great pomp from his throne, with 
the severest resolution never to remount it. A 

20 public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's 
happy escape from the disease of broken neck ; and 
the state coach was dedicated thenceforward as a 
votive offering to the god Fo Fo — whom the 
learned more accurately called Fi Fi. 

25 A revolution of this same Chinese character did 
young Oxford of that era effect in the constitution 
of mail-coach society. It was a perfect French 
Revolution ; and we had good reason to say, Qa ira. 
In fact, it soon became too popular. The "public" 

30 — a well-known character, particularly disagreea- 



88 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

ble, though slightly respectable, and notorious for 
affecting the chief seats in synagogues — had at 
first loudly opposed this revolution; but, when 
the opposition showed itself to be ineffectual, our 
disagreeable friend went into it with headlong 5 
zeal. At first it was a sort of race between us; 
and, as the public is usually from thirty to fifty 
years old, naturally we of young Oxford, that 
averaged about twenty, had the advantage. Then 
the public took to bribing, giving fees to horse- lo 
keepers, etc., who hired out their persons as warm- 
ing pans on the box seat. That, you know, was 
shocking to" all moral sensibilities. Come to 
bribery, said we, and there is an end to all morality 
— Aristotle^s, Zeno's, Cicero's, or anybody's. And, 15 
besides, of what use was it? For we bribed also. 
And, as our bribes, to those of the public, were 
as five shillings to sixpence, here again young Ox- 
ford had the advantage. But the contest was ruin- 
ous to the principles of the stables connected with 20 
the mails. This whole corporation was constantly 
bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed ; a mail- 
coach yard was like the hustings in a contested 
election ; and a horsekeeper, ostler, or helper, was 
held by the philosophical at that time to be the 25 
most corrupt character in the nation. 

There was an impression upon the public mind, 
natural enough from the continually augmenting 
velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an 
outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 89 

danger. On the contrary, I maintained that, if a 
man had become nervous from some gypsy predic- 
tion in his childliood, allocating to a particular 
moon, now approaching, some unknown danger, 
5 and he should inquire earnest!}^, "Whither can I 
fly for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? or 
a lunatic hospital? or the British Museum?" I 
should have replied, "Oh, no ; I'll tell you what to 
do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on the 

10 l;ox of his majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you 
there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date 
that you are made unhappy — if noters and pro- 
testers are the sort of wretches whose astrological 
shadows darken the house of life — then note you 

15 what I vehemently protest, viz., that no matter 
though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every 
county should be running after you with his posse, 
touch a hair of your head he cannot while you 
keep house and have your legal domicile on the box 

20 of the mail. It is felony to stop the mail ; even 
the sheriff cannot do that. And an extra touch of 
the whip to the leaders (no great matter if it 
grazes the sheriff) at any time guarantees your 
safety." In fact, a bedroom in a quiet house 

25 seems a safe enough retreat ; yet it is liable to its 
own notorious nuisances — to robbers by night, to 
rats, to fire. But the mail laughs at these ter- 
rors. To robbers, the answer is packed up and 
ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's 

30 blunderbuss. Rats, again ! there are none about 



OQ SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

mail-coaches, any more than snakes in Von TroiPs 
Iceland; except, indeed, now and then a parlia- 
mentary rat, who always hides his shame in what 
I have shown to be the "coal cellar." And, as to 
fire, I never knew but one in a mail coach ; which 5 
was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an obstinate 
sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of 
the law and the lawgiver that had set their faces 
against his offense, insisted on taking up a forbid- 
den seat in the rear of the roof, from which he lo 
could exchange his own yarns with those of the 
guard. No greater offense was then known to 
mail coaches ; it was treason, it was Icesa majestas, 
it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's 
pipe, falling among the straw of the hinder boot, 15 
containing the mailbags, raised a flame which 
(aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a 
revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even 
this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In 
dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, 20 
resting with benign composure upon our knowl- 
edge that the fire would have to burn its way 
through four inside passengers before it could 
reach ourselves. I remarked to the coachman, 
with a quotation from Virgil's ^Eneid really too 25 
hackneyed : 

Jam proxinius ardet 
Ucalegon. 

But, recollecting that the Virgilian part of the 
coachman's education might have been neglected, 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 91 

I interpreted so far as to say that perhaps at that 
moment the flames were catching hold of our 
worthy brother and inside passenger, Ucalegon. 
The coachman made no answer — which is my own 
5 way when a stranger addresses me either in Syriac 
or in Coptic; but by his faint skeptical smile he 
seemed to insinuate that he knew better — for that 
Ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the way-bill, 
and therefore could not have been booked. 

10 No dignity is perfect which does not at some 
point ally itself with the mysterious. The connec- 
tion of the mail with the state and the executive 
government — a connection obvious, but yet not 
strictly defined — gave to the whole mail establish- 

15 ment an official grandeur which did us service on 
the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. 
Not the less impressive were those terrors l^eeause 
their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. 
Look at those turnpike gates; with what deferen- 

20 tial hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly 
open at our approach ! Look at that long line of 
carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the 
very crest of the road. Ah, traitors ! they do not 
hear us as yet; but, as soon as the dreadful blast 

25 of our horn reaches them with proclamation of 
our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation 
they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our 
wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck 
quarterings. Treason they feel to be their crime; 

30 each individual carter feels himself under the ban 



92 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

of confiscation and attainder ; his blood is attainted 
through six generations; and nothing is wanting 
but the headsman and his axe, the block and the 
sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. 
What ! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay 5 
the king's message on the highroad — to interrupt 
the great respirations, ebb and flood, systole and 
diastole, of the national intercourse ? — to endanger 
the safety of tidings running day and night be- 
tween all nations and languages ? Or can it be lo 
fancied, among the weakest of men, that the bodies 
of the criminals will be given up to their widows 
for Christian burial? Now, the doubts which 
were raised as to our powers did more to wrap 
them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty, 15 
than could have been effected by the sharpest defi- 
nitions of the law from the quarter sessions. We, 
on our parts (we, the collective mail, I mean), 
did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges 
by the insolence with which we wielded them. 20 
AVhether this insolence rested upon law that gave 
it a sanction, or upon conscious power that 
haughtily dispensed with that sanction, equally it 
spoke from a potential station; and the agent, in 
each particular insolence of the moment, was 25 
viewed reverentially, as one having authority. 

Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail 
would become frisky; and, in its difficult wheel- 
ings among the intricacies of early markets, it 
would upset an apple cart, a cart loaded with eggs, 30 



THE ENiiLLSil MAJL COACH. 



93 



etc. Huge was the affliction and dismay, awful 
was the smash. I, as far as possible, endeavored 
in such a case to represent the conscience and 
moral sensibilities of the mail; and, when wilder- 
5 nesses of eggs were lying poached under our 
horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my hands 
in sorrow, saying (in words too celebrated at that 
time, from the false echoes of Marengo), "Ah! 
wherefore have we not time to weep over you ?" — 
10 which was evidently impossible, since, in fact, we 
had not time to laugh over them. Tied to post- 
office allowance, in some cases of fifty minutes for 
eleven miles, could the royal mail pretend to 
undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence ? 
15 Could it be expected to provide tears for the acci- 
dents of the road? If even it seemed to trample 
on humanity, it did so, I felt, in discharge of its 
own more peremptory duties. 

Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I 
20 upheld its rights ; as a matter of duty, I stretched 
to the uttermost its privilege of imperial prece- 
dency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal 
powers which I hinted to be lurking constructively 
in the charters of this proud establishment. Once 
25 I remember being on the box of the Holyhead 
mail, between Shrewsbury and Osw^estr}^, when a 
tawdry thing from Birmingham, some Tallyho or 
Highflyer, all flaunting with green and gold, came 
up alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal 
30 simplicity of form and color in this plebeian 



94 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

wretch ! The single ornament on our dark ground 
of chocolate color was the mighty shield of the 
imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as 
modest as a signet ring bears to a seal of office. 
Even this was displayed only on a single panel, 5 
whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations 
to the mighty state ; whilst the beast from Birming- 
ham, our green-and-gold friend from false, fleet- 
ing, perjured Brummagem, had as much writing 
and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have lO 
puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. 
For some time this Birmingham machine ran 
along by our side — a piece of familiarity that al- 
ready of itself seemed to me sufficiently Jacobini- 
cal. But all at once a movement of the horses an- 15 
nounced a desperate intention of leaving us be- 
hind. "Do you see that f I said to the coachman. 
"I see," was his short answer. He was wide awake 
— yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for 
the horses of our audacious opponent had a dis- 20 
agreeable air of freshness and power. But his 
motive was loyal ; his wish was that the Birming- 
ham conceit should be full-blown before he froze 
it. When that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to 
speak by a stronger word, he si^rang his known 25 
resources: he slipped our royal horses like 
cheetahs, or hunting leopards, after the affrighted 
game. How they could retain such a reserve of 
fiery power after the work they had accomplished 
seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides so 



THE ENGLIS-H MAIL COACH. 95 

the physical superiority, was a tower of moral 
strength, namely the king's name, "which they 
upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them 
without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them 
5 into the rear with so lengthening an interval be- 
tween us as proved in itself the bitterest mockery 
of their presumption ; whilst our guard blew back 
a shattering blast of triumph that was really too 
painfully full of derision. 

10 I mention this little incident for its connection 
with what followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting be- 
hind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn 
within me during the progress of the race? I 
said, with philosophic calmness. No; because we 

15 were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could 
be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying 
that such a Birmingham thing should dare to 
challenge us. The Welshman replied that he 
didn't see that; for that a cat might look at a 

20 king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully 
race the Holyhead mail. "Race us, if you like,'^ 
I replied, "though even that has an air of sedi- 
tion; but not leat us. This would have been 
treason; and for its own sake I am glad that the 

25 Tallyho was disappointed." So dissatisfied did 
the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last 
I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from 
one of our elder dramatists: viz., that once, in 
some far Oriental kingdom when the sultan of all 

30 the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief 



96 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

omrahs were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly 
flew at a majestic eagle, and, in defiance of the 
eagle's natural advantages, in contempt also of 
the eagle's traditional royalty, and before the 
whole assembled field of astonished spectators 5 
from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the 
spot. Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal 
contest, and burning admiration for its unparal- 
leled result. He commanded that the hawk should 
be brought before him ; he caressed the bird with lo 
enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the com- 
memoration of his matchless courage, a diadem of 
gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the 
hawk's head, but then that, immediately after this 
solemn coronation, the bird should be led off to 15 
execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, 
but not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise 
rebelliously against his liege lord and anointed 
sovereign, the eagle. "Now," said I to the Welsh- 
man, ''to you and me, as men of refined sensibili- 20 
ties, how painful it would have been that this poor 
Brummagem brute, the Tallyho, in the impossible 
case of a victory over us, should have been crowned 
with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds, and 
Roman pearls, and then led oif to instant execu- 25 
tion." The Welshman doubted if that could be 
warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 
Gth of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulat- 
ing the precedency of coaches, as being probably 
the statute relied on for the capital punishment of 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 97 

such offenses, he replied dryly that, if the attempt 
to pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a 
pity that the Tallyho appeared to have so imper- 
fect an acquaintance with law. 
5 The modern modes of traveling cannot compare 
with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and 
power. They boast of more velocity — not, how- 
ever, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our life- 
less knowledge, resting upon alien evidence : as, 

10 for instance, because somebody says that we have 
gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far 
from feeling it as a personal experience; or upon 
the evidence of a result, as that actually we find 
ourselves in York four hours after leaving Lon- 

15 don. Apart from such an assertion, or such a re- 
sult, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, 
seated on the old mail coach, we needed no evi- 
dence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On 
this system the word was not magna loquimur, as 

20 upon railw^ays, but vivimus. Yes, "magna vivi- 
mus" ; we do not make verbal ostentation of our 
grandeurs, we realize our grandeurs in act, and 
in the very experience of life. The vital experience 
of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts im- 

25 possible on the question of our speed; we heard 
our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling ; and 
this speed was not the product of blind insensate 
agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was 
incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest 

30 among brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic 



98 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. The sensi- 
bility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac 
light of his eye, might be the last vibration of 
such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might 
be the first. But the intervening links that con- 5 
nccted them, that spread the earthquake of battle 
into the eyeball of the horse, were the heart of 
man and its electric thrillings — kindling in the 
rapture of the fiery strife, and then propagating 
its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures lo 
to the heart of his servant the horse. But now, on 
the new system of traveling, iron tubes and boilers 
have disconnected man's heart from the ministers 
of his locomotion. Nile nor Trafalgar has power 
to raise an extra bubble in a steam kettle. The 15 
galvanic cycle is broken up forever; man's im- 
perial nature no longer sends itself forward 
through the electric sensibility of the horse; the 
inter-agencies are gone in the mode of communi- 
cation between the horse and his master, out of 20 
which grew so many aspects of sublimity under 
accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that 
revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight 
solitudes that awed. Tidings fitted to convulse all 
nations must henceforward travel by culinary 25 
process; and the trumpet that once announced 
from afar the laureled mail, heart-shaking when 
heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming it- 
self through the darkness to every village or soli- 
tary house on its route, has now given way for- 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 99 

ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler. Thus 
have perished multiform openings for public ex- 
pressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great 
national tidings — for revelations of faces and 

5 groups that could not offer themselves amongst the 
fluctuating mobs of a railway station. The gath- 
erings of gazers about a laureled mail had one cen- 
ter, and acknowledged one sole interest. But the 
crowds attending at a railway station have as lit- 

10 tie unity as running water, and own as many cen- 
ters as there are separate carriages in the train. 

How else, for example, than as a constant 
watcher for the dawn, and for the London mail 
that in summer months entered about daybreak 

15 amongst the lawny thickets of Marlborough forest, 
couldst thou, sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have 
become the glorified inmate of my dreams? Yet 
Fanny, as the loveliest young woman for face and 
person that perhaps in my whole life I have be- 

20 held, merited the station which even now, from a 
distance of forty years, she holds in my dreams; 
yes, though by links of natural association she 
brings along with her a troop of dreadful 
creatures, fabulous and not fabulous, that are 

25 more abominable to the heart than Fanny and 
the dawn are delightful. 

Miss Fanny of the Bath road, strictly speaking, 
lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came 
so continually to meet the mail that I on my fre- 

30 quent transits rarely missed her, and naturally 



100 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

connected her image with the great thoroughfare 
where only I had ever seen her. Why she came 
60 punctually I do not exactly know ; but I believe 
with some burden of commissions, to be executed 
in Bath, which had gathered to her own residence 5 
as a central rendezvous for converging them. The 
mail-coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore 
the royal livery happened to be Fanny's grand- 
father. A good man he was, that loved his beauti- 
ful granddaughter, and, loving her wisely, was 10 
vigilant over her deportment in any case where 
young Oxford might happen to be concerned. Did 
my vanity then suggest that I myself, individual- 
ly, could fall within the line of his terrors? Cer- 
tainly not, as regarded any physical pretensions 15 
that I could plead; for Fanny (as a chance pas- 
senger from her own neighborhood once told me) 
counted in her train a hundred and ninety-nine 
professed admirers, if not open aspirants to her 
favor ; and probably not one of the whole brigade 20 
but excelled myself in personal advantages. 
Ulysses even, with the unfair advantage of his ac- 
cursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that 
amount of suitors. So the danger might have 
seemed slight — only that woman is universally 25 
aristocratic; it is among her nobilities of heart 
that she is so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions 
in my favor might easily with Miss Fanny have 
compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I then 
make love to Fanny ? Why, yes ; about as much so 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 101 

love as One could make while the mail was chang- 
ing horses — a process which, ten years later, did 
not occupy above eighty seconds; but then — viz., 
about Waterloo — it occupied five times eighty. 

5 Now, four hundred seconds offer a field quite 
ample enough for whispering into a young 
woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of 
parenthesis) some trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa 
did right, therefore, to watch me. And yet, as 

10 happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a 
contest with the admirers of granddaughters, how 
vainly would he have watched me had I meditated 
any evil whispers to Fanny ! She, it is my belief, 
would have protected herself against any man's 

15 evil suggestions. But he, as the result showed, 
could not have intercepted the opportunities for 
such suggestions. Yet, why not? Was he not 
active ? Was he not blooming ? Blooming he was 
as Fanny herself 

20 Say, all our praises why should lords 

Stop, that's not the line. 

Say, all our roses why should girls engross? 

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 
deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being 
25 drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from the fount- 
ains of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming 
face, some infirmities he had ; and one particularly 
in which he too much resembled a crocodile. This 



102 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 
The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to 
the absurd length of his back ; but in our grand- 
papa it arose rather from the absurd hreadtli of 
his back, combined, possibly, with some growing 5 
stiffness in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile in- 
firmity of his I planted a human advantage for 
tendering my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance 
of all his honorable vigilance, no sooner had he 
presented to us his mighty Jovian back (what a lo 
field for displaying to mankind his royal scarlet I), 
while inspecting professionally the buckles, the 
straps, and the silvery turrets of his harness, than 
I raised Miss Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the 
mixed tenderness and respectfulness of my man- 15 
ner, caused her easily to understand how happy 
it would make me to rank upon her list as No. 10 
or 12: in which case a few casualties among her 
lovers (and, observe, they hanged liberally in 
those days) might have promoted me speedily to 20 
the top of the tree; as, on the other hand, with 
how much loyalty of submission I acquiesced by 
anticipation in her award, supposing that she 
should plant me in the very rearward of her favor, 
as No. 199+1. Most truly I loved this beautiful 25 
and ingenuous girl; and, had it not been for the 
Bath mail, timing all courtships by post-office al- 
lowance, Heaven only knows what might have 
come of it. People talk of being over head and 
^ears in love ; now, the mail was the cause that I 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 103 

sank only over ears in love — which, you know, still 
left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole conduct 
of the affair. 

Ah, reader ! when I look back upon those days, 

5 it seems to me that all things change — all things 
perish. ^'Perish the roses and the palms of 
kings;" perish even the crowns and trophies of 
AVaterloo; thunder and lightning are not the 
thunder and lightning which I remember. Eoses 

10 are degenerating. The Fannies of our island — 
though this I say with reluctance — are not visibly 
improving; and the Bath road is notoriously 
superannuated. Crocodiles, you will say, are sta- 
tionary. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile 

15 does not change — that a cayman, in fact, or an 
alligator, is just as good for riding upon as he was 
in the time of the Pharaohs. That may be; but 
the reason is that the crocodile does not live fast 
— he is a slow coach. I believe it is generally un- 

20 derstood among naturalists that the crocodile is a 
blockhead. It is my own impression that the 
Pharaohs were also blockheads. Xow, as the 
Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over 
Egyptian society, this accounts for a singular 

25 mistake that prevailed through innumerable gen- 
erations on the Nile. The crocodile made the 
ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant 
chiefly for his own eating. Man, taking a differ- 
ent view of the subject, naturally met that mis- 

30 take by another ; he viewed the crocodile as a 



104 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

thing sometimes to worship, but always to run 
away from. And this continued till Mr. Water- 
ton changed the relations between the animals. 
The mode of escaping from the reptile he showed 
to be not by running away, but by leaping on its 5 
back booted and spurred. The two animals had 
misunderstood each other. The use of the croco- 
dile has now been cleared up — viz., to be ridden; 
and the final cause of man is that he may Improve 
the health of the crocodile by riding him a-fox- lo 
hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty cer- 
tain that any crocodile who has been regularly 
hunted through the season, and is master of the 
weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now 
as well as ever he would have done in the infancy 15 
of the Pyramids. 

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all 
things else undeniably do: even the shadow of the 
Pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in 
vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too 20 
pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the 
darkness, if I happen to call back the image of 
Fanny, up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty 
years a rose in June; or if I think for an instant 
of the rose in June, up rises the lieavenly face of 25 
Fanny. One after the other, like the antiphonies 
in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in 
June, then back again the rose in June and Fanny. 
Then come both together, as in a chorus — roses 
and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, so 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 105 

thick as blossoms in Paradise. Then comes a 
venerable crocodile, in a royal livery of scarlet and 
gold, with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is driv- 
ing four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. 

5 And suddenly we upon the mail are pulled up by 
a mighty dial, sculptured with the hours, that 
mingle with the heavens and the heavenly host. 
Then all at once we are arrived at Marlborough 
forest, amongst the lovely households of the roe 

10 deer; the deer and their fawns retire into the 
dewy thickets ; the thickets are rich with roses ; 
once again the roses call up the sweet countenance 
of Fanny ; and she, being the granddaughter of a 
crocodile, awakens a dreadful host of semi- 

15 legendary animals — griffins, dragons, basilisks, 
sphinxes — till at length the wdiole vision of fight- 
ing images crowds into one towering armorial 
shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and 
human loveliness that have perished, but quartered 

20 heraldically with unutterable and demoniac na- 
tures, while over all rises, as a surmounting crest, 
one fair female hand, with the forefinger pointing, 
in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upward to heaven, 
where is sculptured the eternal writing which pro- 

25 claims the frailty of earth and her children. 

GOING DOWX WITH VICTORY. 

But the grandest chapter of our experience 
within the whole mail-coach service w^as on those 
occasions when we went down from London with 



106 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

the news of victory. A period of about ten years 
stretched from Trafalgar to Waterloo; the second 
and third years of which period (1806 and 1807) 
were comparatively sterile; but the other nine 
(from 1805 to 1815 inclusively) furnished a long 5 
succession of victories, the least of which, in such 
a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of 
position: partly for its absolute interference with 
the plans of our enemy, but still more from its 
keeping alive through central Europe the sense of lo 
a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to 
tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by 
continual blockades, to insult them by capturing 
if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes 
of their arrogant armies, repeated from time to 15 
time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in 
one quarter to which the hopes of Christendom 
turned in secret. How much more loudly must 
this proclamation have spoken in the audacity of 
having bearded the elite of their troops, and hav- 20 
ing beaten them in pitched battles ! Five years' 
of life it was worth paying down for the privilege 
of an outside place on a mail coach, when carrying 
down the first tidings of any such event. And it 
is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and 2? 
the multitude of our frigates disposable for the 
rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any 
unauthorized rumor steal away a prelibation from 
the first aroma of the regular dispatches. The 
government news was generally the earliest news, so 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 107 

From 8 p. m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later 
imagine tlie mails assembled on parade in Lom- 
bard Street; where, at that time, and not in St. 
Martin's-le-Grand, was seated the General Post- 

5 Office. In what exact strength we mustered 1 do 
not remember; but, from the length of each sepa- 
rate attelage, we filled the street, though a long 
one, and though we were drawn up in double file. 
On any night the spectacle was beautiful. The 

10 absolute perfection of all the appointments about 
the carriages and the harness, their strength, their 
brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity — 
but, more than all, the royal magnificence of the 
horses — were what might first have fixed the at- 

15 tention. Every carriage on every morning in the 
year was taken down to an official inspector for 
examination : wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, 
lamps, were all critically probed and tested. Every 
part of every carriage had been cleaned, every 

20 horse had been groomed, with as much rigor as if 
they belonged to a private gentleman; and that 
part of tlie spectacle offered itself always. But 
the night before us is a night of victory ; and, be- 
hold ! to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking 

25 addition ! — horses, men, carriages, all are dressed 
in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. The 
guards, as being officially his majesty's servants^ 
and of the coachmen such as are within the 
privilege of the Post-Office, wear the royal liveries 

30 of course; and, as it is summer (for all the land 



108 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

victories were naturally won in summer), they 
wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed 
to view, without any covering of upper coats. Such 
a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the 
laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts, by giving 5 
to them openly a personal connection with the 
great news in which already they have the general 
interest of patriotism. That great national senti- 
ment surmounts and quells all sense of ordinary 
distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be lo 
gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as 
such except by dress ; for the usual reserve of their 
manner in speaking to the attendants has on this 
night melted away. One heart, one pride, one 
glory, connects every man by the transcendent 15 
bond of his national blood. The spectators, who 
are numerous beyond precedent, express their 
sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual 
hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the 
post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, 20 
the great ancestral names of cities known to his- 
tory through a thousand years — Lincoln, Win- 
chester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, 
Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glas- 
gow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the 25 
grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its 
towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment 
by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. 
Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked 
down upon the mailbags. That sound to each in- 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 109 

dividual mail is the signal for drawing off; which 
process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. 
Then come the horses into play. Horses ! can these 
be horses that bound off with the action and 
5 gestures of leopards ? What stir ! what sea-like 
ferment ! what a thundering of wheels ! what a 
trampling of hoofs ! what a sounding of trumpets ! 
what farewell cheers ! what redoubling peals of 
brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of 

10 the particular mail — "Liverpool forever !" with 
the name of the particular victory — "Badajoz for- 
ever \" or "Salamanca forever !" The half -si um- 
bering consciousness that all night long, and all 
the next day — perhaps for even a longer period — 

15 many of these mails, like fire racing along a train 
of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant 
new successions of burning joy, has an obscure 
effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multi- 
plying to the imagination into infinity the stages 

20 of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems 
to be let loose, which from that moment is des- 
tined to travel, without intermission, westward 
for three hundred miles — northward for six hun- 
dred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street 

25 friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a 
sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumber- 
ing sympathies which in so vast a succession we 
are going to awake. 

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, 

30 and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of 



no SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

the northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon 
our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the 
broad light of the summer evening, the sun, per- 
haps, only just at the point of setting, we are seen 
from every story of every house. Heads of every 5 
age crowd to the windows; young and old under- 
stand the language of our victorious symbols ; and 
rolling volleys of sympathizing cheers run along 
us, behind us, and before us. The beggar, rearing 
himself against the wall, forgets his lameness, — 10 
real or assumed, — thinks not of his whining trade, 
but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we 
pass him. The victory has healed him, and says. 
Be thou whole ! Women and children, from gar- 
rets alike and cellars, through infinite London, 15 
look down or look up with loving eyes upon our 
gay ribbons and our martial laurels; sometimes 
kiss their hands; sometimes hang out, as signals 
of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, 
anything that, by catching the summer breeze?, 20 
will express an aerial jubilation. On the London 
side of Barnet, to which we draw near within a 
few minutes after nine, observe that private car- 
riage which is approaching us. The weather being 
60 warm, the glasses are all down ; and one may 25 
read, as on the stage of a theater, everything that 
goes on within. It contains three ladies — one 
likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or 
eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What 
lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. m 

pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that 
passes, in these ingenuous girls ! By the sudden 
start and raising of the hands on first discovering 
our laureled equipage, by the sudden movement 
5 and appeal to the elder lady from both of them, 
and by the heightened color on their animated 
countenances, we can almost hear them saying, 
^"'See, see ! Look at their laurels ! Oh, mamma ! 
there has been a great battle in Spain ; and it has 

10 been a great victory/^ In a moment we are on the 
point of passing them. "We passengers — I on the 
box, and the two on the roof behind me — raise our 
hats to the ladies; the coachman makes his pro- 
fessional salute with the whip; the guard even, 

15 though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as 
an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The 
ladies move to us, in return, with a winning 
graciousness of gesture; all smile on each side in 
a way that nobody could misunderstand, and that 

20 nothing short of a grand national sympathy could 
so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies say 
that we are nothing to them? Oh, no; they will 
not say that ! They cannot deny — they do not 
deny— that for this night they are our sisters; 

25 gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for 
twelve hours to come, w^e on the outside have the 
honor to be their brothers. Those poor women, 
again, who stop to gaze upon us with delight at 
the entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of 

30 weariness, to be returning from labor — do you 



112 SELECTIONS FEQM DE QUINCE Y. 

mean to say that they are washerwomen and char- 
women? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mis- 
taken. I assure you they stand in a far higher 
rank; for this one night they feel themselves by 
birthright to be daughters of England, and answer 5 
to no humbler title. 

Every joy, however, even rapturous joy, — such 
is the sad law of earth, — may carry with it grief, 
or fear of grief, to some. Three miles beyond 
Barnet, we see approaching us another private car- lo 
riage, nearly repeating the circumstances of the 
former case. Here, also, the glasses are all down ; 
here, also, is an elderly lady seated ; but the two 
daughters are missing; for the single young per- 
son sitting by the lady's side seems to be an at- 15 
tendant — so I judge from her dress, and her air 
of respectful reserve. The lady is in mourning; 
and her countenance expresses sorrow. At first 
she does not look up; so that I believe she is not 
aware of our approach, until she hears the meas- 20 
ured beating of our horses' hoofs. Then she 
raises her eyes to settle them painfully on our 
triumphal equipage. Our decorations explain the 
case to her at once; but she beholds them with 
apparent anxiety, or even with terror. Some 25 
time before this, I, finding it difficult to hit a 
flying mark when embarrassed by the coachman's 
person and reins intervening, had given to the 
guard a Courier evening paper, containing the 
gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. II3 

Accordingly he tossed it in, so folded that the 
huge capitals expressing some such legend as 
glorious victory might catch the eye at once. To 
see the paper, however, at all, interpreted as it 
5 was by our ensigns of triumph, explained every- 
thing; and, if the guard were right in thinking 
the lady to have received it with a gesture of hor- 
ror, it could not be doubtful that she had suffered 
some deep personal affliction in connection with 

10 this Spanish war. 

Here, now, was the case of one wdio, having for- 
merly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be 
distressing herself with anticipations of another 
similar suffering. That same night, and hardly 

15 three hours later, occurred the reverse case. A 
poor woman, w^ho too probably w^ould find herself, 
in a day or two, to have suffered the heaviest of 
afflictions by the battle, blindly allowed herself to 
express an exultation so unmeasured in the news 

20 and its details as gave to her the appearance which 
among Celtic Highlanders is called feij. This was 
at some little tow^n where we changed horses an 
hour or two after midnight. Some fair or wake 
had kept the people up out of their beds, and had 

25 occasioned a partial illumination of the stalls and 
booths, presenting an unusual but very impres- 
sive effect. We saw many lights moving about 
as we drew near; and perhaps the most striking 
scene on the whole route was our reception at 

30 this place. The flashing of torches and the beau- 



114 SELECTIONS FHOM DE QUINCEY. 

tiful radiance of blue lights (technically, Bengal 
lights) upon the heads of our horses; the fine ef- 
fect of such a showery and ghostly illumination 
falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels; 
whilst all around ourselves, that formed a center 5 
of light, the darkness gathered on the rear and 
flanks in massy blackness; these optical splendors, 
together with the prodigious enthusiasm of the 
people, composed a pictvire at once scenical and 
affecting, theatrical and holy. As we stayed for ^o 
three or four minutes, I alighted ; and imme- 
diately from a dismantled stall in the street, 
where no doubt she had been presiding through 
the earlier part of the night, advanced eagerly a 
middle-aged woman. The sight of my newspaper 15 
it was that had drawn her attention upon myself. 
The victory which we were carrying down to the 
provinces on this occasion was the imperfect one 
of Talavera — imperfect for its results, such was 
the virtual treachery of the Spanish general, 20 
Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever memorable 
heroism. I told her the main outline of the bat- 
tle. The agitation of her enthusiasm had been so 
conspicuous when listening, and when first ap- 
plying for information, that I could not but ask 25 
her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular 
army. Oh, yes ; her only son was there. In what 
regiment? He was a trooper in the Twenty-third 
Dragoons. My heart sank within me as she made 
that answer. This sublime regiment, which an 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 115 

Englishman should never mention without raising 
his hat to their memory, had made the most mem- 
orable and effective charge recorded in military- 
annals. They leaped their horses — over a trench 

5 where they could; into it, and with the result of 
death or mutilation, when they could 7iot. What 
proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. 
Those who did closed up and w^ent down upon 
the enemy with such divinity of fervor (I use 

10 the word divinity by design; the inspiration of 
God must have prompted this movement to those 
whom even then lie was calling to his presence) 
that two results followed. As regarded the 
enemy, this Twenty-third Dragoons, not, I be- 

15 lieve, originally three hundred and fifty strong, 
paralyzed a French column six thousand strong, 
then ascended the hill, and fixed the gaze of the 
whole French army. As regarded themselves, the 
Twenty-third were supposed at first to have been 

20 barely not annihilated ; but eventually, I believe, 
about one in four survived. And this, then, was 
the regiment — a regiment already for some hours 
glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London, 
as lying stretched, by a large majority, upon one 

25 bloody aceldama — in which the young trooper 
served whose mother was now talking in a spirit 
of such joyous enthusiasm. Did I tell her the 
truth ? Had I the heart to break up her dreams ? 
No. To-morrow, said I to myself — to-morrow, 

80 or the next day, will publish the worst. For one 



116 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

night more wherefore should she not sleep in 
peace? After to-morrow the chances are too 
many that peace will forsake her pillow. This 
brief respite, then, let her owe to my gift and my 
forbearance. But, if I told her not of the bloody 5 
price that had been paid, not therefore was I silent 
on the contributions from her son's regiment to 
that day's service and glory. I showed her not 
the funeral banners under which the noble regi- 
ment was sleeping. I lifted not the overshadow- lo 
ing laurels from the bloody trench in which horse 
and rider lay mangled together. But I told her 
how these dear children of England, officers and 
privates, had leaped their horses over all obstacles 
as gayly as hunters to the morning's chase. I 15 
told her how they rode their horses into the mists 
of death — saying to myself, but not saying to her, 
*^and laid down their young lives for thee, 
Mother England ! as willingly — poured out their 
noble blood as cheerfully — as ever, after a long 20 
day's sport, when infants^ they had rested their 
wearied heads upon their mother's knees, or had 
sunk to sleep in her arms." Strange it is, yet 
true, that she seemed to have no fears for her 
eon's safety, even after this knowledge that the 25 
Twenty-third Dragoons had been memorably en- 
gaged ; but so much was she enraptured by the 
knowledge that his regiment, and therefore that 
he, had rendered conspicuous service in the dread- 
ful conflict — a service which had actually made 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 117 

them, within the last twelve hours, the foremost 
topic of conversation in London — so absolutely 
was fear swallowed up in joy — that in the mere 
simplicity of her fervent nature, the poor woman 
5 threw her arms round my neck, as she thought 
of her son, and gave to me the kiss which secretly 
was meant for him. 

Sectiox II. — The Visiox of Sudden Death. 

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion 
of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden 

10 death ? It is remarkable that, in different con- 
ditions of society, sudden death has been variously 
regarded as the consummation of an earthly career 
most fervently to be desired, or again, as that con- 
summation which is with most horror to be dep- 

15 recated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner 
party (ccena), on the very evening before his as- 
sassination, when the minutes of his earthly career 
were numbered, being asked what death in his 
judgment, might be pronounced the most eligible, 

20 replied, "That which .should be most sudden." 
On the other hand, the divine Litany of our Eng- 
lish Church, when breathing forth supplications,, 
as if in some representative character, for the 
whole human race prostrate before God, places 

25 such a death in the very van of horrors : "From 
lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence,, 
and famine ; from battle and murder and from 



118 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

sudden death — Good Lord, deliver us." Sudden 
death is here made to crown the climax in a grand 
ascent of calamities; it is ranked among the last 
of curses; and yet hy the nohlest of Eomans it 
was ranked as the first of blessings. In that dif- 5 
ference most readers will see little more than 
the essential difference between Christianity and 
Paganism. But this, on consideration, I doubt. 
The Christian Church may be right in its estimate 
of sudden death ; and it is a natural feeling, lo 
though after all it may also be an infirm one, to 
wish for a quiet dismissal from life, as that which 
seems most reconcilable with meditation, with 
penitential retrospects, and with the humilities 
of farewell prayer. There does not, however, oc- 15 
cur to me any direct scriptural warrant for this 
earnest petition of the English Litany, unless 
under a special construction of the word "sudden." 
It seems a petition indulged rather and conceded 
to human infirmity than exacted from human 20 
piety. It is not so much a doctrine built upon 
the eternities of the Christian system as a plaus- 
ible opinion built upon special varieties of physi- 
cal temperament. Let that, however, be as it 
may, two remarks suggest themselves as prudent 25 
restraints upon a doctrine which else may wan- 
der, and has wandered, into an uncharitable 
superstition. The first is this: that many people 
are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden 
death from the disposition to lay a false stress so 



THE ENGL1811 MAIL COACH. 119 

upon worrls or acts simply l)ecause by an accident 
they have become fmal words or acts. If a man 
dies, for instance, by some sudden death when he 
happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely 
5 regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the in- 
toxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. 
But that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he 
was not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his 
intoxication were a solitary accident, there can be 

10 no reason for allowing special emphasis to this 
act simply because through misfortune it became 
his final act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were 
no accident, but one of his habitual transgres- 
sions, will it be the more habitual or the more a 

15 transgression because some sudden calamity, sur- 
prising him, has caused this habitual transgres- 
sion to be also a final one. Could the man have 
had any reason even dimly to foresee his own 
sudden death, there would have been a new feat- 

20 ure in his act of intemperance — a feature of pre- 
sumption and irreverence, as one that, having 
known himself drawing near to the presence of 
God, should have suited his demeanor to an ex- 
pectation so awful. But this is no part of the 

25 case supposed. And the only new element in the 
man's act is not any element of special immorality, 
but simply of special misfortune. 

The other remark has reference to the meaning ' 
of the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and 

30 the Christian Church do not differ in the way sup- 



120 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

posed — that is do not differ by any difference of 
doctrine as between Pagan and Christian views 
of the moral temper appropriate to death; but 
perhaps they are contemplating different cases. 
Both contemplate a violent death, a ^BuiOavaros 5 
— death that is Btaios, or in other words, death 
that is brought about, not by internal and spon- 
taneous change, but by active force having its 
origin from without. In this meaning the two 
authorities agree. Thus far they are in harmony. lO 
But the difference is that the Roman by the word 
^^sudden" means unlingering, whereas the Chris- 
tian Litany by "sudden death" means a death 
ivitliout ivaniing, consequently without any avail- 
able summons to religious preparation. The poor 15 
mutineer who kneels down to gather into his 
heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pity- 
ing comrades dies by a most sudden death, in 
Caesar's sense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one 
(possibly not one) groan, and all is over. But, 20 
in the sense of the Litany, the mutineer's death 
is far from sudden; his offense originally, his im- 
prisonment, his trial, the interval between his 
sentence and its execution, having all furnished him 
with separate warnings of his fate — having all sum- 25 
moned him to meet it with solemn preparation. 
Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, 
we comprehend the faithful earnestness with 
which a holy Christian Church pleads on behalf of 
her poor departing children that God would 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 121 

vouchsafe to them the last great privilege and 
distinction possible on a deathbed, viz., the oppor- 
tunity of untroubled preparation for facing this 
mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere variety 
5 in the modes of dying where death in some shape 
is inevitable, proposes a question of choice which, 
equally in the Eoman and the Christian sense, 
will be variously answered according to each man's 
variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect 

10 of sudden death there is, one modification, upon 
which no doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms 
it is the most agitating — viz., where it surprises a 
man under circumstances which offer (or which 
seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, inapprecia- 

15 bly minute chance of evading it. Sudden as the 
danger which it affronts must l)e any effort by 
which such an evasion can be accomplished. Even 
that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying 
in extremity where all hurry seems destined to 

2.1 be vain — even that anguish is liable to a hideous 
exasperation in one particular case, viz., where 
the appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct 
of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on be- 
half of some other life besides your own, acci- 

25 dentally thrown upon your protection. To fail, 
to collapse in a service merely your own, might 
seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is 
far from venial. But to fail in a case where 
Providence has suddenly thrown into your hands 

30 the final interests of another — a fellow-creature 



122 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

shuddering between the gates of life and death; 
this, to a man of apprehensive conscience, would 
mingle the misery of an atrocious criminality 
with the misery of a bloody calamity. You are 
called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die, 5 
but to die at the very moment when, by any even 
partial failure or eft'eminate collapse of your ener- 
gies, you will be self-denounced as a murderer. 
You had but the twinkling of an eye for your ef- 
fort, and that effort might have been unavailing ; lo 
but to have risen to the level of such an effort 
would have rescued you, though not from dying, 
yet from dying as a traitor to your final and fare- 
well duty. 

The situation here contemplated exposes a 15 
dreadful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of 
human nature. It is not that men generally are 
summoned to face such awful trials. But po- 
tentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is 
moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's na- 20 
tures. Upon the secret mirror of our dreams 
such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, to every 
one of us. That dream, so familiar to childhood, 
of meeting a lion, and, through languishing pros- 
tration in hope and the energies of hope, that 25 
constant sequel of lying down before the lion, pub- 
lishes the secret frailty of human nature — reveals 
its deep-seated falsehood to itself — records its 
abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us es- 
capes that dream ; perhaps, as by some sorrowful 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 123 

doom of man, that dream repeats for every one 
of us, through every generation, the original 
temptation in Eden. Every one of us, in this 
dream, has a bait offered to the infirm phices of 
5 his own individual will; once again a snare is 
presented for tempting him into captivity to a 
luxury of ruin ; once again, as in aboriginal Para- 
dise, the man falls by his own choice; again, by 
infinite iteration, the ancient earth groans to 
10 heaven, through her secret caves, over the weak- 
ness of her child. "Nature, from her seat, sigh- 
ing through all her works," again "gives signs of 
woe that all is lost" ; and again the counter-sigh 
is repeated to the sorrowing heavens for the end- 
is less rebellion against God. It is not without 
probability that in the world of dreams every 
one of us ratifies for himself the original trans- 
gression. In dreams, perhaps under some secret 
conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to 
20 the consciousness at the time, but darkened to the 
memory as soon as all is finished, each several 
child of our mysterious race completes for himself 
the treason of the aboriginal fall. 

The incident, so memorable in itself by its feat- 
25 ures of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for 
the eye, which furnished the text for this reverie 
upon Sudden Death, occurred to myself in the 
dead of night, as a solitary spectator, when seated 
on the box of the IManchester and Glasgow mail, 
30 in the second or third summer after Waterloo. I 



124 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY, 

find it necessary to relate the circumstances, be- 
cause they are such as could not have occurred 
unless under a singular combination of accidents. 
In those days, the oblique and lateral communi- 
cations with many rural post offices were so ar- 5 
ranged, either through necessity or through defect 
of system, as to make it requisite for the main 
northwestern mail (/'. e., the doicn mail) on 
reaching Manchester to halt for a number of 
hours ; how many, I do not remember ; six or lo 
seven, I think; but the result was that, in the 
ordinary course, the mail recommenced its jour- 
ney northward aljout midnight. "Wearied witli 
the long detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked 
out about eleven o'clock at night for the sake of 15 
fresh air; meaning to fall in with the mail and 
resume my seat at the post office. The night, 
however, being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely 
risen, and the streets being at that hour empty, 
so as to offer no opportunities for asking the road, 20 
I lost my way, and did not reach the post office 
until it was considerably past midnight; but, to 
my great relief (as it was important for me to be 
in Westmoreland by the morning) I saw in the 
huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the 25 
gloom, an evidence that my chance was not yet 
lost. Past the time it was; but, by some rare 
accident, the mail was not even yet ready to 
start. I ascended to my seat on the box, where 
my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 125 

Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imita- 
tion of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of 
bunting on the shore of his discovery, by way of 
warning off the ground the whole human race, 

5 and notifying to the Christian and the heathen 
worlds, with his best compliments, that he has 
hoisted his pocket handkerchief once and forever 
upon that virgin soil ; thenceforward claiming the 
jus dominii to the top of the atmosphere above it, 

10 and also the right of driving shafts to the cen- 
ter of the earth below it ; so that all people found 
after this warning either aloft in upper chambers 
of the atmosphere, or groping in subterranean 
shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of 

15 the soil, will be treated as trespassers — kicked, 
that is to say, or decapitated, as circumstances 
may suggest, by their very faithful servant, the 
owner of the said pocket handkerchief. In the 
present case it is probable that my cloak might 

20 not have been respected, and the jus gentium 
might have been cruelly violated in my person — 
for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, 
gas being a great ally of morality; but it so hap- 
pened that on this night there was no other out- 

25 side passenger ; and thus the crime, which else 
was but too probable, missed fire for want of a 
criminal. 

Having mounted the box, I took a small quan- 
tity of laudanum, having already traveled two 

30 hundred and fifty miles — viz., from a point sev- 



126 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

enty miles beyond London. In the taking of lau- 
dannm there was nothing extraordinary. But by 
accident it drew upon me the special attention of 
my assessor on the box, the coachman. And in 
that also there was nothing extraordinary. But 5 
by accident, and with great delight, it drew my 
own attention to the fact that this coachman was 
a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but 
one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Ver- 
gil as 10 

Monstrum horrendum, infornie, ingens, cui lumen 
ademptum. 

He answered to the conditions in every one of the 
items : 1, a monster he was ; 2, dreadful ; 3, shape- 
less ; 4, huge ; 5, who had lost an eye. But why 15 
should that delight me? Had he been one of the 
Calenders in the "Arabian Nights," and had paid 
down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, 
what right had I to exult in his misfortune? 
I did not exult ; I delighted in no man's punish- 20 
ment, though it were even merited. But these 
personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified 
in an instant an old friend of mine whom I had 
known in the south for some years as the most 
masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in 25 
all Europe that could (if any could) have driven 
six-in-hand full gallop over Al Sirat — that dread- 
ful bridge of Mohammed, with no side battle- 
ments, and of extra room not enough for a razor's 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 1^7 

edge — leading right aeross the bottomless gulf. 
Under this eminent man, whom in Greek I cog- 
nominated Cyclops Dipli relates (Cyclops the 
Charioteer), I, and others known to me, studied 
5 the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too 
elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid 
extra fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand 
high in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty 
(though, observe, not his discernment) that he 

10 could not see my merits. Let us excuse his ab- 
surdity in this particular by remembering his 
want of an eye. Doubtless that made him blind 
to my merits. In the art of conversation, how- 
ever, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of 

15 him. On this present occasion great joy was at 
our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? 
Had the medical men recommended northern air, 
or how? I collected, from such explanations as 
he volunteered, that he had an interest at stake 

20 in some suit at law now pending at Lancaster ; 
so that probably he had got himself transferred 
to this station for the purpose of connecting with 
his professional pursuits an instant readiness for 
the calls of his lawsuit. 

25 Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely 
we have now waited long enough. Oh, this pro- 
crastinating mail, and this procrastinating post 
office! Can't they take a lesson upon that sub- 
ject from me? Some people have called me pro- 

30 crastinating. Yet you are witness, reader, that 



123 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

I was here kept waiting for the post office. Will 
the post office lay its hand on its heart, in its mo- 
ments of sobriety, and assert that ever it waited 
for me? What are they about? The guard tells 
me that there is a large extra accumulation of for- 5 
eign mails this night, owing to irregularities 
caused by war, by wind, by weather, in the packet 
service, which as yet does not benefit at ail by 
steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post office 
has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheat- lo 
en correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing it 
from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. 
But at last all is finished. Sound your horn, 
guard ! Manchester, good-by ! w^e've lost an hour 
by your criminal conduct at the post office; which, K 
however, though I do not mean to part with a 
serviceable ground of complaint, and one which 
really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an 
advantage, since it compels us to look sharply 
for this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, 20 
and to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one 
mile extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at 
eleven miles an hour; and for the moment I de- 
tect no changes in the energy or in the skill of 
Cyclops. 25 

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually 
(though not in law) is the capital of Westmore- 
land, there were at this time seven stages of 
eleven miles each. The first five of these, count- 
ing^ from Manchester, terminate in Lancaster ; ro 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 129 

which is therefore fifty-five miles north of i\Ian- 
chester, and the same distance exactly from Liver- 
pool. The first three stages terminate in Preston 
(called by way of distinction from other towns of 

5 that name, Proud Preston) ; at which place it is 
that the separate roads from Liverpool and from 
Manchester to the north become confluent. With- 
in these first three stages lay the foundation, the 
progress, and termination of our night's adven- 

10 ture. During the first stage I found out that Cy- 
clops was mortal; he was liable to the shocking 
affection of sleep — a thing w^hich previously I had 
never suspected. If a man indulges in the vicious 
habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation of 

15 Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to exe- 
cute his notions, avails him nothing. "0 Cy- 
clops!'' I exclaimed, "thou art mortal. My 
friend, thou snorest." Through the first eleven 
miles, however, this infirmity — which I grieve to 

20 say that he shared with the whole Pagan Pan- 
theon — betrayed itself only by brief snatches. On 
waking up, he made an apology for himself which, 
instead of mending matters, laid open a gloomy 
vista of coming disasters. The summer assizes, 

25 he reminded me, were now going on at Lancaster ; 
in consequence of Avhich, for three nights and 
three days he had not lain down in a bed. Dur- 
ing the day he was waiting for his own summons 
as a witness on the trial in which he w^as inter- 

30 ested, or else, lest he should be missing at the 



130 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

critical moment, was drinking with the other wit- 
nesses under the pastoral surveillance of the at- 
torneys. During the night, or that part of it 
which at sea would form the middle watch, he 
was driving. This explanation certainly account- 
ed for his drowsiness, but in a way which made 
it much more alarming; since now, after several 
days' resistance to this infirmity, at length he was 
steadily giving way. Throughout the second 
stage he grew more and more drowsy. In the i) 
second mile of the third stage he surrendered him- 
self finally, and without a struggle, to his peril- 
ous temptation. All his past resistance had but 
deepened the weight of this final oppression. 
Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon him ; and, 15 
to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after 
singing "Love amongst the Eoses" for perhaps 
thirty times, without invitation and without ap- 
plause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself 
to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coach- 20 
man's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus 
at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came 
about that I found myself left in charge of his 
majesty's London and Glasgow mail, then running 
at the least twelve miles an hour. 25 

What made this negligence less criminal than 
else it must have been thought was the condition 
of the roads at night during the assizes. At that 
time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, 
and also of populous Manchester, with its vast 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 131 

cincture of populous rural districts, was called 
up by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lillipu- 
tian Lancaster. To break up this old traditional 
usage required, 1, a conflict with powerful estab- 

5 lished interests, 2, a large system of new ar- 
rangements, and 3, a new parliamentary statute. 
But as yet this change was merely in contem- 
plation. As things were at present, twice in the 
year so vast a body of business rolled northward 

10. from the southern quarter of the county that, for 
a fortnight at least, it occupied the severe exer- 
tions of two judges in its dispatch. The conse- 
quence of this was that every horse available for 
such a service, along the whole line of road, was 

15 exhausted in carrying down the multitudes of 
people who were parties to the different suits. 
By sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, 
through utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, 
the road sank into profound silence. Except the 

20 exliaustion in the vast adjacent county of York 
from a contested election, no such silence succeed- 
ing to no such fiery uproar was ever witnessed in 
England. 

On this occasion the usual silence and solitude 

25 prevailed along the road. Xot a hoof nor a wheel 
was to be heard. And, to strengthen this false 
luxurious confidence in the no'.seiess roads, it hap- 
pened also that the night was one of peculiar 
solemnity and peace. For my own part, though 

80 slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so 



132 [SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCE Y. 

far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm 
as to sink into a profound reverie. The month 
was August; in the middle of which lay my own 
birthday — a festival to every thoughtful man sug- 
gesting solemn and often sigh-born thoughts. 5 
The county was my own native county — upon 
which, in its southern section, more than upon 
any equal area known to man past or present, had 
descended the original curse of labor in its heav- 
iest form, not mastering the bodies only of men, lo 
as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working 
through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of 
earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of 
human power put forth daily. At this particular 
season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane 15 
of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed 
to a stranger, which swept to and from Lancaster 
all day long, hunting the county up and down, 
and regularly subsiding back into silence about 
sunset, could not fail (when united with this 20 
permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very 
metropolis and citadel of labor) to point the 
thoughts pathetically upon that countervision of 
rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, 
towards which, as to their secret haven, the pro- 25 
founder aspirations of man's heart are in solitude 
continually traveling. 01)liquely upon our left we 
were nearing the sea; which also must, under the 
present circumstances, be repeating the general 
state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 133 

the light, bore each an orchestral part in this 
universal lull. Moonlight and the first timid 
tremblings of the dawn were by this time blend- 
ing; and the blendings were brought into a still 

5 more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery 
mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the 
woods and fields, but with a veil of equable trans- 
parency. Except the feet of our own horses — 
which, running on a sandy margin of the road, 

10 made but little disturbance — there was no sound 
abroad. In the clouds and on the earth prevailed 
the same majestic peace; and, in spite of all that 
the villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin 
of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts 

15 of our infancy, we still believe in no such non- 
sense as a limited atmosphere. Whatever we 
may swear with our false feigning lips, in our 
faithful hearts we still believe, and must forever 
believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf 

20 between earth and the central heavens. Still, in 
the confidence of children that tread without 
fear every chamber in their father's house, and to 
whom no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic vis- 
ion which sometimes is revealed for an hour. upon 

25 nights like this, ascend with easy steps from the 
sorrow-stricken fields of earth upward to the san- 
dals of God. 

Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awak- 
ened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the 

30 distant road. It stole upon the air for a mo- 



134 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

ment; I listened in awe; but then it died away. 
Once roused, however, I could not but observe 
with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. 
Ten years' experience had made my eye learned 
in the valuing of motion; and I saw that we were 5 
now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend 
to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my 
fear is that I am miserably and shamefully defi- 
cient in that quality as regards action. The palsy 
of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty lo 
weight of dark unfathomed remembrances upon 
my energies when the signal is flying for action. 
But, on the other hand, this accursed gift I have, 
as regards thought, that in the first step toward 
the possibility of a misfortune I see its total evo- is 
lution; in the radix of the series I see too cer- 
tainly and too instantly its entire expansion; in 
the first syllable of the dreadful sentence I read 
already the last. It was not that I feared for 
ourselves. Us our bulk and impetus charmed 20 
against peril in any collision. And I had ridden 
through too many hundreds of perils that were 
frightful to approach, that were matter of laugh- 
ter to look back upon ; the first face of which was 
horror, the parting face a jest — for any anxiety 25 
to rest upon our interests. The mail was not 
built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could be- 
tray me who trusted to its protection. But any 
carriage that we could meet would be frail and 
light in comparison of ourselves. And I re- 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 135 

marked this ominous accident of our situation — 
we were on the wrong side of the road. But 
then, it may be said, the other party, if other there 
was, might also be on the wrong side; and two 

5 wrongs might make a right. That was not likely. 
The same motive which had drawn us to the right- 
hand side of the road — viz., the luxury of the soft 
beaten sand as contrasted with the paved center — 
would prove attractive to others. The two ad- 

10 verse carriages would, therefore, to a certainty, 
be traveling on the same side ; and from this side, 
as not being ours in law, the crossing over to the 
other would, of course, be looked for from us. 
Our lamps, still lighted, would give the impres- 

15 sion of vigilance on our part. And every crea- 
ture that met us would rely upon us for quarter- 
ing. All this, and if the separate links of the 
anticipation had been a thousand times more, I 
saw, not discursively, or by effort, or by succes- 

20 sion, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous in- 
tuition. 

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of 
the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! 
what a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, 

25 was that which stole upon the air, as again the far- 
off sound of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it 
was — a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off — 
secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, 
was not the less inevitable; that, being known, 

30 was not therefore healed. What could be done — 



136 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

who was it that could do it — to check the storm- 
flight of these maniacal horses ? Could I not seize 
the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coach- 
man? You, reader, think that it would have 
been in your power to do so. And I quarrel not 5 
with your estimate of yourself. But, from the 
way in which the coachman's hand was vised be- 
tween his upper and lower thigh, this was im- 
possible. Easy, was it? See, then, that bronze 
equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the lo 
bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. Un- 
bridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash 
his mouth with water. Easy, was it? Unhorse 
me, then, that imperial rider; knock me those 
marble feet from those marble stirrups of Charle- 15 
magne. 

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now 
too clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what 
could it be? Was it industry in a taxed cart? 
Was it youthful gayety in a gig ? Was it sor- 20 
row that loitered, or joy that raced? For as yet 
the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from 
distance, to decipher the character of the motion. 
Whoever were the travelers, something must be 
done to warn them. Upon the other party rests 25 
the active responsibility, but upon us — and, woe 
is me ! that us was reduced to my frail opium- 
shattered self — rests the responsibility of warning. 
Yet, how should this be accomplished? Might I 
not sound the guard's horn ? Already, on the 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 13; 

first thought, I was making my way over the roof 
to the guard's seat. But this, from tiie accident 
which I have mentioned, of the foreign mails 
being piled upon the roof, was a difficult and even 

5 dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearly three 
hundred miles of outside traveling. And, fortu- 
nately, before I had lost much time in the at- 
tempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle 
of the road which opened upon us that final stage 

10 where the collision must be accomplished and the 
catastrophe sealed. All was apparently finished. 
The court was sitting; the case was heard; the 
judge had finished; and only the verdict was yet 
in arrear. 

15 Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, 
six hundred yards, perhaps, in length; and the 
umbrageous trees, which rose in a regular line 
from either side, meeting high overhead, gave 
to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These 

20 trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light; 
but there was still light enough to perceive, at 
the further end of this Gothic aisle, a frail reedy 
gig, in which were seated a young man, and by 
his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! what 

25 are you about? If it is requisite that you should 
whisper your communications to this young lady, 
■ — though really I see nobod}', at an hour and on a 
road so solitary, likely to overhear you, — is it 
therefore requisite that you should carry your lips 

30 forward to hers? The little carriage is creeping 



138 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

on at one mile an hour; and the parties within it, 
being thus tenderly engaged, are naturally bend- 
ing down their heads. Between them and eter- 
nity, to all human calculation, there is but a min- 
ute and a half. Oh, Heavens ! what is it that I & 
shall do? Speaking or acting, what help can I 
offer? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of 
the tale might seem laughable, that I should need 
a suggestion from the Iliad to prompt the sole 
resource that remained. Yet so it was. Sud- i^ 
denly I remembered the shout of Achilles, and its 
effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son 
of Peleus, aided by Pallas? No; but then I 
needed not the shout that should alarm all Asia 
militant ; such a shout would suffice as might 15 
carry terror into the hearts of two thoughtless 
young people and one gig horse. I shouted — and 
the young man heard m.e not. A second time I 
shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised 
his head. 20 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, 
could be done; more on my part was not possible. 
Mine had been the first step; the second was for 
the young man; the third was for God. If, said 
I, this stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he 25 
loves the young girl at his side — or, loving her not, 
if he feels the obligation, pressing upon every 
man worthy to be called a man, of doing his ut- 
most for a woman confided to his protection — he 
wiU at least make some effort to save her. If that 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 139 

fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death 
more cruel, for having made it ; and he will die as 
a brave man should, with his face to the danger, 
and with his arm about the woman that he 

5 sought in vain to save. But if he makes no ef- 
fort — shrinking without a struggle from his duty 
— he himself will not the less certainly perish for 
this baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less ; 
and why not? Wherefore should we grieve that 

10 there is one craven less in the world ? No ; let 
him perish, without a pitying thought of ours 
wasted upon him; and, in that case, all our grief 
will be reserved for the fate .of the helpless girl 
who now, upon the least shadow of failure in him, 

15 must by the fiercest of translations — must with- 
out time for a prayer — must within seventy sec- 
onds — stand before the judgment-seat of God. 

But craven he was not ; sudden had been the call 
upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. 

20 He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that 
was coming down; already its gloomy shadow 
darkened above him ; and already he was meas- 
uring his strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a 
vulgar thing does courage seem when we see na- 

25 tions buying it and selling it for a shilling a day. 
Ah ! what a sublime thing does courage seem when 
some fearful summons on the great deeps of life 
carries a man, as if running before a hurricane, 
up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis 

30 from which lie two courses, and a voice says to 



140 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

him audibly, "One way lies hope; take the other, 
and mourn forever !'^ How grand a triumph if, 
even then, amidst the raving of all around him, 
and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to 
confront his situation — is able to retire for a mo- 5 
ment into solitude with God, and to seek his coun- 
sel from him! 

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, 
the stranger settled his countenance, steadfastly 
upon us, as if to search and value every element lo 
in the conflict before him. For five seconds more 
of his seventy he sat immovably, like one that 
mused on some gr^at purpose. For five more, 
perhaps, he sat with eyes upraised, like one that 
prayed in sorrow, under some extremity of doubt, 15 
for light that should guide him to the better 
choice. Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; 
and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising 
his horse's fore feet from the ground, he slewed 
him round on the pivot of his hind legs, so as to 20 
plant the little equipage in a position nearly at 
right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was 
not improved, except as a first step had been taken 
towards the possibility of a second. If no more 
were done, nothing was done; for the little car-25 
riage still occupied the very center of our path, 
tliough in an altered direction. Yet even now it 
may not be too late; fifteen of the seventy sec- 
onds may still be unexhausted ; and one almighty 
bound may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 141 

then, hurry ! for the flying moments — they hurry. 
Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man ! for the 
cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry ! Fast 
are the flying moments, faster are the hoofs of 
5 our horses. But fear not for him, if human 
energy can suffice; faithful was he that drove to 
his terrific duty; faithful was the horse to his 
command. One blow, one impulse given with 
voice and hand, by the stranger, one rush from 

10 the horse, one bound as if in the act of rising to a 
fence, landed the docile creature's fore feet upon 
the crown or arching center of the road. The 
larger half of the little equipage had then cleared 
our overtowering shadow; that was evident even 

15 to my own agitated sight. But it mattered little 
that one wreck should float off in safety, if upon 
the Avreck that perished were embarked the human 
freightage. The rear part of the carriage — was 
tJiat certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin? 

20 What power could answer the question? Glance 
of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which 
of these had speed enough to sweep between the 
question and the answer, and divide the one from 
the other? Light does not tread upon the steps 

25 of light more indivisibly than did our all-con- 
quering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the 
gig. That must the young man have felt too 
plainly. His back was now turned to us; not by 
sight could he any longer communicate with the 

30 peril ; but, by the dreadful rattle of our harness. 



142 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

too truly had his ear been instructed that all was 
finished as regarded any effort of his. Already 
in resignation he had rested from his struggle; 
and perhaps in his heart he was whispering. 
'Tather, which art in heaven, do thou finish 5 
above what I on earth have attempted." Faster 
than ever mill-race we ran past them in our inex- 
orable flight. Oh, raving of hurricanes that must 
have sounded in their young ears at the moment of 
our transit ! Even in that moment the thunder of lo 
collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle- 
bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, we had 
struck the off-wheel of the little gig; which stood 
rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced as 
to be accurately parallel with the near wheel. The 15 
blow from the fury of our passage resounded ter- 
rifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins 
we might have caused. From my elevated sta- 
tion I looked down, and looked back upon the 
scene ; which in a moment told its own tale, and 20 
wrote all its records on my heart forever. 

Here was the map of the passion that now had 
finished. The horse was planted immovably, with 
his fore feet upon the paved crest of the central 
road. He of the whole party might be supposed 25 
untouched by the passion of death. The little 
cany carriage — partly, perhaps, from the violent 
torsion of the wheels in its recent movement, 
partly from the thundering blow we had given to 
it — as if it sympathized with human horror, was so 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 143 

all alive with tremblings and shiverings. The 
young man trembled not, nor shivered. He sat 
like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agi- 
tation frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared 
5 not to look round ; for he knew that, if anything 
remained to do, by him it could no longer be 
done. And as yet he knew not for certain if their 

safety were accomplished. But the lady 

But the lady Oh, Heavens ! will that spec- 
ie tacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and 
sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her 
arms w^ildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary 
object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, des- 
pairing? Figure to yourself, reader, the ele- 
15 ments of the case ; suffer me to recall before your 
mind the circumstances of that unparalleled situ- 
ation. From the silence and deep peace of this 
saintly summer night — from the pathetic blending 
of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — 
20 from the manly tenderness of this flattering, whis- 
pering, murmuring love — suddenly as from the 
woods and fields — suddenly as from the chambers 
of the air opening in revelation — suddenly as from 
the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon her, 
25 with the flashing of cataracts, Death the crowned 
phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and 
the tiger roar of his voice. 

The moments were numbered; the strife was 

finished; the vision was closed. In the twinkling 

30 of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the 



144 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

termination of the umbrageous aisle; at the right 
angles we wheeled into our former direction ; the 
turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes 
in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for- 
ever. 5 

Section III. — Dream-Fugue : 

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN 
^EATH. 

Whence the sound 
Of instruments, that made melodious chime, lo 

Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved 
Their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high. 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue. 

Par. Lost, bk. xi. 15 

Tumultuosissimamente. 

Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I 
read and interpreted by the shadows of thy avert- 
ed signs rapture of panic taking the shape (which 
among tombs in churches I have seen) of woman 20 
bursting her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic 
form bending forward from the ruins of her grave 
with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with 
clasped adoring hands — waiting, watching, trem- 
bling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from 25 
dust forever ! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering 
humanity on the brink of almighty abysses ! vision 
that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a 
shriveling scroll from before the wrath of fire 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 145 

racing on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so 
brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst 
not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, 
wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad 

5 funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of 
dreams? Fragment of music too passionate, 
heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, 
that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals 
through all the worlds of sleep, and, after forty 

10 years, have lost no element of horror ? 



Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The 
everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown 
open wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and ver- 
dant as a savanna, the unknown lady from the 

15 dreadful vision and I myself are floating — she 
upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English 
three-decker. Both of us are wooing gales of 
festal happiness within the domain of our com- 
mon countr}^, within that ancient watery park, 

20 within the pathless chase of ocean, where Eng- 
land takes her pleasure as a huntress through win- 
ter and summer, from the rising to the setting 
sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was 
hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic 

25 islands through which the pinnace moved ! And 
upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers; 
young women how lovely, young men how noble, 
that were dancing together, and slowly drifting to- 



146 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

ward us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms 
from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, 
amidst natural caroling and the echoes of sweet 
girlish laughter Slowly the pinnace nears us, 
gayly she hails us, and silently she disappears be- 5 
neath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, 
as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the 
carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — 
all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, 
meeting or overtaking her ? Did ruin to our lo 
friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? 
Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked 
over the bow for an answer, and behold ! the pin- 
nace was dismantled; the revel and the revelers 
were found no more ; the glory of the vintage was 15 
dust, and the forests with their beauty were left 
without a witness upon the seas. "But where" — 
and I turned to our crew — "where are the lovely 
women that danced beneath the awning of flow- 
ers and clustering corymbi ? Whither have fled 20 
the noble young men that danced with them?" 
Answer there was none. But suddenly the man 
at the masthead, whose countenance darkened 
with alarm, cried out, "Sail on the weather beam ! 
Down she comes upon us ; in seventy seconds she 25 
also will founder." 

II. 

I looked to the weather side, and the summer 
had departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 147 

with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat 
mighty mists, which grouped themselves into 
arches and long cathedral aisles. Down one of 
these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a 
5 crossbow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. 
^"Are they mad?" some voice exclaimed from our 
deck. '*Do they woo their ruin?" But in a mo- 
ment, as she was close upon us, some impulse of a 
heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias 

10 to her course, and oif she forged without a shock. 
As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds 
stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened 
ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges 
of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce to 

15 catch her. But far away she was borne into 
desert spaces of the sea ; whilst still by sight I fol- 
lowed her, as she ran before the howling gale, 
chased by angry seabirds and by maddening bil- 
lows; still I saw her, as at the moment when she 

20 ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with 
her white draperies streaming before the wind. 
There she stood, with hair disheveled, one hand 
clutched among the tackling — rising, sinking, flut- 
tering, trembling, praying ; there for leagues I saw 

25 her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to 
heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing 
waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, 
upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and 
mockery, all was hidden forever in driving show- 

30 ers ; and afterward, but when I know not, nor 
how — - — 



148 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

III. 

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable dis- 
tance, wailing over the dead that die before the 
dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored 
to some familiar shore. The morning twilight 
even then was breaking and, by the dusky reve- 5 
lations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with 
a garland of white roses about her head for some 
great festival, running along the solitary strand 
in extremity of haste. Her running was the run- 
ning of panic ; and often she looked back as to lo 
some dreadful enemy in the rear. But when I 
leaped ashore, and followed on her steps to warn 
her of a peril in front, alas ! from me she fled 
as from another peril, and vainly I shouted to her 
of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster and faster 15 
she ran; round a promontory of rock she wheeled 
out of sight; in an instant I also wheeled round 
it, but only to see the treacherous sands gathering 
above her head. Already her person was buried ; 
only the fair young head and the diadem of white 20 
roses around it were still visible to the pitying 
heavens; and, last of all, was visible one white 
marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair 
young head, as it was sinking down to darkness — 
saw this marble arm, as it rose above her head 25 
and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, ris- 
ing, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand 
stretched out from the clouds — saw this marble 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 149> 

arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering 
her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the 
arm — these all had sunk; at last over these alsa 
the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial 
5 of the fair young girl remained on earth, except 
my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from 
the desert seas, that, rising again more softly^ 
sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child ^ 
and over her blighted dawn. 

10 I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men 
have ever given to the memory of those that died 
before the dawn, and by treachery of earth, our 
mother. But suddenly the tears and funeral bells 
were hushed by a shout as of many nations, and 

15 by a roar as from some great king's artillery, ad- 
vancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar 
by echoes from the mountains. ''Hush !" I said, 
as I bent my ear earthward to listen — "hush ! 
This either is the very anarchy of strife, or else'^ 

20 — and then I listened more profoundly, and whis- 
pered as I raised my head — "or else, oh Heavens I 
it is victory that is final, victory that swallows up 
all strife." 

IV. 

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land 

25 and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon 

a triumphal car, amongst companions crowned 

with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, 

brooding over all the land, hid from us the 



150 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about 
ourselves as a center; we heard them, but saw 
them not. Tidings had arrived, within an hour, 
of a grandeur that measured itself against cen- 
turies; too full of pathos they were, too full of 5 
joy, to utter themselves by other language than 
by tears, by restless anthems, and Te Deums re- 
verberated from the choirs and orchestras of 
€arth. These tidings we that sat upon the lau- 
reled car had it for our privilege to publish lo 
amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible 
through the darkness, by snortings and tramp- 
lings, our angry horses, that knew no fear of 
fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay. Where- 
fore was it that we delayed ? We waited for a 15 
secret word, that should bear witness to the hope 
of nations as now accomplished forever. At mid- 
night the secret word arrived; which word was — 
Waterloo and Recovered Christendom! The 
dreadful word shone by its own light ; before us 20 
it went ; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and 
spread a golden light over the paths which we 
traversed. Every city, at the presence of the se- 
cret word, threw open its gates. The rivers were 
conscious as we crossed. All the forests, as we 25 
ran along their margins, shivered in homage to 
the secret word. And the darkness comprehended 
it. 

Two hours after midnight we approached a 
mighty Minster. Its gates, which rose to the 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 151 

clouds, were closed. But, when the dreadful word 
that rode before us reached them with its golden 
light, silently they moved back upon their hinges; 
and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the 

5 grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our 
pace ; and at every altar, in the little chapels and 
oratories to the right hand and left of our course, 
the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in 
sympathy with the secret word that was flying 

10 past. Forty leagues we might have run in the 
cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light 
had reached us, when before us we saw the aerial 
galleries of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of 
the fretwork, every station of advantage among 

15 the traceries, was crested by white-robed choristers 
that sang deliverance ; that wept no more tears, as 
once their fathers had wept; but at intervals that 
sang together to the generations, saying. 

Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue, 

20 and receiving answers from afar. 

Such as once in heaven and earth were sung. 

And of their chanting was no end; of our head- 
long pace was neither pause nor slackening. 
Thus, as we ran like torrents — thus, as we 
25 swept with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo 
of the cathedral graves — suddenly we became 
aware of a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off 
horizon — a city of sepulchers, built within the 
saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that rested 



152 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was 
the necropolis; yet, in the tirst minute, it lay like 
a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was 
the distance. In the second minute it trembled 
through many changes, growing into terraces and 5 
towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the 
pace. In the third minute already, with our 
dreadful gallop, w^e were entering its suburbs. 
Vast sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers 
and turrets that, upon the limits of the central lo 
aisle, strode forward with haughty intrusion, that 
ran back with mighty shadows into answering re- 
cesses. Every sarcophagus showed many bas-re- 
liefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battlefields ; bat- 
tles from forgotten ages, battles from yesterday ; 15 
battlefields that, long since, nature had healed and 
reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of 
flowers; battlefields that were yet angry and crim- 
son with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there 
did we run ; where the towers curved, there did 20 
we curve. With the flight of swallows our horses 
swept round every angle. Like rivers in flood 
wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that 
rde into the secrets of forests, faster than ever 
light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying 25 
equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior 
instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — 
dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had slept 
in God from Crecy to Trafalgar.* And now had 
we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 153 

abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recov- 
ered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable cen- 
tral aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us 
we beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a 

5 carriage as frail as flowers. The mists which 
went before her hid the fawns that drew her, but 
could not hide the shells and tropic flowers with 
which she played — but could not hide the lovely 
smiles by which she uttered her trust in the 

10 mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked 
down upon her from the mighty shafts of its 
pillars. Face to face she was meeting us ; face to 
face she rode, as if danger there were none. "Oh, 
baby !" I exclaimed, "shalt thou be the ransom for 

15 Waterloo? Must we, that carry tidings of great 
joy to every people, be messengers of ruin to thee !" 
In horror I rose at the thought ; but then also, in 
horror at the thought rose one that was sculptured 
on a bas-relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly 

20 from the field of battle he rose to his feet ; and, 
unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his 
dying anguish, to his stony lips — sounding once, 
and yet once again; proclamation that, in thy ears, 
oh, baby! spoke from the battlements of death. 

25 Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and 
aboriginal silence. The choir had ceased to sing. 
The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our 
harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the 
graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had 

30 been unlocked unto life. By horror we, that were 



154 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

SO full of life, we men and our horses, with their 
fiery fore legs rising in mid air to their ever- 
lasting gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief. Then 
a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were 
taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, 5 
tore into their channels again; again the choir 
burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muf- 
fling of storms and darkness; again the thunder- 
ings of our horses carried temptation into the 
graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, lo 
drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty be- 
fore us — "Whither has the infant fled? is the 
young child caught up to God?" Lo! afar off, 
in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the 
clouds ; and on a level with their summits, a height 15 
insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest ala- 
baster. On its eastern face was trembling a crim- 
son glory. A glory was it from the reddening 
dawji that now streamed through the windows? 
Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs 20 
painted on the windows? Was it from the bloody 
bas-reliefs of earth? There, suddenly, within 
that crimson radiance, rose the apparition of a 
woman's head, and then of a woman's figure. The 
child it was — grown up to woman's height. Cling- 25 
ing to the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — 
sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; and behind the 
volume of incense that, night and day streamed 
upward from the altar, dimly was seen the fiery 
font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 155 

should have baptized her with the baptism of 
death. But by her side was kneeling her better 
angel, that hid his face w4th wings ; that wept and 
pleaded for her ; that prayed when she could not ; 
5 that fought with Heaven by tears for her deliver- 
ance; which also, as he raised his immortal 
countenance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in 
his eye, that from Heaven he had won at last. 

V. 

Then was completed the passion of the mighty 

10 fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as 
yet had but muttered at intervals — gleaming 
amongst clouds and surges of incense — threw up, 
as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart 
shattering music. Choir and anti-choir were fill- 

15 ing fast with unknown voices. Thou also. Dying 
Trumpeter^ with thy love that was victorious, and 
thy anguish that was finishing, didst enter the 
tumult; trumpet and echo — farewell love, and 
farewell anguish — rang through the dreadful 

20 Sanctus. Oh, darkness of the grave ! that from 
the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert 
visited and searched by the effulgence in the 
angel's eye — were these indeed thy children? 
Pomps of life, that, from the burials of centuries, 

25 rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did ye in- 
deed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo! as 
I looked back for seventy leagues through the 
mighty cathedral, I saw the quick and the dead 



156 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

that sang together to God, together that sang to 
the generations of man. All the hosts of jubila- 
tion, like armies that ride in pursuit, moved with 
one step. Us, that, with laureled heads, were 
passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as 5 
with a garment, they wrapped us round with 
thunders greater than our own. As brothers we 
moved together; to the dawn that advanced, to 
the stars that fled; rendering thanks to God in 
the highest — that, having hid his face through one lo 
generation behind thick clouds of War, once again 
was ascending, from the Campo Santo of Water- 
loo was ascending, in the visions of Peace ; render- 
ing thanks for thee, young girl ! whom having 
overshadowed with his ineffable passion of death, 15 
suddenly did God relent, suffered thy angel to 
turn aside his arm, and even in thee, sister un- 
known ! shown to me for a moment only to be 
hidden forever, found an occasion to glorify his 
goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phan- 20 
toms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates 
of the golden dawn, with the secret word riding 
before thee, with the armies of the grave behind 
thee — seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; 
a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have seen 25 
thee followed by God's angel through storms, 
through desert seas, through the darkness of 
quicksands, through dreams and the dreadful 
revelations that are in dreams ; only that at the 
last, with one sling of his victorious arm, he might 30 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 157 

snatch thee back from ruin, and might emblazon 
in thy deliverance the endless resurrections of his 
love ! 

Author's Postscript. 

^'The English Mail Coach.''— This little paper, 

5 according to my original intention, formed part 
of the ^^Suspiria de Profundis" ; from which, 
for a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to de- 
tach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently in- 
telligible even when dislocated from its place in a 

10 larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or 
two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but de- 
liberately in print, professed their inability to ap- 
prehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow 
the links of the connection between its several 

15 parts. I am myself as little able to understand 
where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking 
obscurity, as these critics found themselves to un- 
ravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indif- 
ferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will 

20 therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper 
according to my original design, and then leave 
the reader to judge how far this design is kept in 
sight through the actual execution. 

Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident 

25 made me, in' the dead of night, and of a night 
• memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an ap- 
palling scene, which threatened instant death in a 
shape the most terrific to two young people whom 



158 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

I had no means of assisting, except in so far as I 
was able to give them a most hurried warning of 
their danger; but even that not until they stood 
within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being 
divided from the most frightful of deaths by 5 
scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. 
Such was the scene, such in its outline, from 
which the whole of this paper radiates as a nat- 
ural expansion. This scene is circumstantially 
narrated in Section the Second, entitled "The 10 
Vision of Sudden Death." 

But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous 
recoil from this dreadful scene, naturally carried 
the whole of that scene, raised and idealized, into 
my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession 15 
of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down 
upon from the box of the mail, was transformed 
into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a 
musical fugue. This troubled dream is circum- 
stantially reported in Section the Third, entitled 20 
"Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death.'' 
What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail — 
the scenical strife of action and passion, of 
anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them 
moving in ghostly silence — this duel between life 25 
and death, narrowing itself to a point of such ex- 
quisite evanescence as the collision neared ; all 
these elements of the scene blended, under the law . 
of association, with the previous and permanent 
features of distinction investing the mail itself ; ^o 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 159 

which features at that time lay — 1st, in velocity 
unprecedented; 2d, in the power and beauty of 
the horses; 3d, in the official connection with the 
government of a great nation, and, 4th, in the 

5 function, almost a consecrated function, of pub- 
lishing and diffusing through the land the great 
political events, and especially the great battles, 
during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These 
honorar}^ distinctions are all described circum- 

10 stantially in the First or introductory Section 
(''The Glory of Motion.") The three first were 
distinctions maintained at all times; but the 
fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the 
war with Xapoleon; and this it was which most 

15 naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. 
Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature 
of the "Dream-Fugue" which my censors were 
least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, 
which, in common with every other great battle, 

20 it had been our special privilege to publish over 
all the land, most naturally entered the dream 
under the license of our privilege. If not — if 
there be anything amiss — let the Dream be re- 
sponsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as 

25 well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for 
not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, 
every element in the shifting movements of the 
Dream derived itself either primarily from the 
incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary 

30 features associated with the mail. For example, 



160 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY. 

the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic 
combination of features which grouped themselves 
together at the point of approaching collision — 
viz., an arrowlike section of the road, six hundred 
yards long, under the solemn lights described, ^ 
with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The 
guard's horn, again, — a humble instrument in it- 
self, — was yet glorified as the organ of publication 
for so many great national events. And the inci- 
dent of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a i^ 
marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to 
his marble lips for the purpose of warning the 
female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by 
my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn 
and to blow a warning blast. But the Dream 15 
knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is the 
responsible party, 



LEVAXA AXD OUE LADIES OF SORROW. 

Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my 
dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who 
is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have 
leisure for very much scholarship, you will not 

5 be angry with me for telling you. Levana was 
the Roman goddess that performed for the new- 
born infant the earliest office of ennobling kind- 
ness, — typical, by its mode, of that grandeur 
which belongs to man everywhere, and of that 

10 benignity in powers invisible which even in pagan 
worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the 
very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for 
the first time the atmosphere of our troubled 
planet, it was laid on the ground. That might bear 

15 different interpretations. But immediately, lest so 
grand a creature should grovel there for more than 
one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy 
for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, 
as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade 

20 it look erect as the king of all this world, and 
presented its forehead to the stars, saying, per- 
haps, in his heart, ''Behold what is greater than 
yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the 
function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, 
161 



16-2 SELECTIONS FEOM BE QUINCEY. 

who never revealed her face (except to me in 
dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her 
name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian 
verb) levare, to raise aloft. 

This is the explanation of Levana, and hence it ^ 
has arisen that some people have understood by 
Levana the tutelary power that controls the edu- 
cation of the nursery. She, that would not suffer 
at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degrada- 
tion for her awful ward, far less could be supposed i^ 
to suffer the real degradation attaching to the 
non-development of his powers. She therefore 
watches over human education. Now the word 
educo, with the penultimate short, was derived (by 
a process often exemplified in the crystallization 15 
of languages) from the word educo, with the 
penultimate long. Whatever educes, or developes, 
educates. By the education of Levana, therefore, 
is meant, — not the poor machinery that moves by 
spelling-books and grammars, but by that mighty 20 
system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom 
of human life, which by passion, by strife, by 
temptation, by the energies of resistance, works 
for ever upon children, — resting not night or day, 
any more than the mighty wheel of day and night 25 
themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, 
are glimmering for ever as they revolve. 

If, then, these are the ministries by which 
Levana works, how profoundly must she reverence 
the agencies of grief. But you, reader, think 30 



LEVANA. 163 

that children are not liable to grief such as mine. 
There are two senses in the word generally, — the 
sense of Euclid, where it means universally (or in 
the whole extent of the genus,) and a foolish sense 

5 of this world, where it means usually, ^ow, 
I am far from saying that children universally are 
capable of grief like mine. But there are more 
than you ever heard of who die of grief in this 
island of ours. I will tell you a common case. 

10 The rules of Eton require that a boy on the 
foundation should be there twelve years : he is 
superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must 
come at six. Children torn away from mothers 
and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I 

15 speak of what I know. The complaint is not en- 
tered by the registrar as grief; but that it is. 
Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed more 
than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs. 
Therefore it is that Levana often communes 

20 with the powers that shake man's heart ; there- 
fore it is that she dotes upon grief. "These ladies,*' 
said I softly to myself, on seeing the ministers 
with whom Levana was conversing, "these are the 
Sorrows; and they are three in number, as the 

25 Graces are three, who dress man's life with beauty : 
the Parcce are three, who weave the dark arras of 
man's life in their mysterious loom, always with 
colours sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic 
crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit 

30 with retributions called from the other side of the 



164 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCEY. 

grave offences that walk upon this; and once even 
the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the 
trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's 
impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all 
three of whom I know." The last words I say ^ 
now; but in Oxford I said, "One of whom I 
know, and the others too surely I shall know.'* 
For already, in my fervent youth, I saw (dimly 
relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) 
the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. lO 
These sisters — by what name shall we call them? 
If I say simply, "The Sorrows," there will be a 
chance of mistaking the term; it might be under- 
stood of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sor- 
row, — whereas I want a term expressing the 15 
mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in 
all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I 
wish to have these abstractions presented as im- 
personations, that is, as clothed with human at- 
tributes of life, and with functions pointing to 20 
flesh. Let us call them, therefore. Our Ladies of 
Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have 
walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they 
are, of one mysterious household ; and their paths 
are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no 25 
end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana, 
and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then? 
0, no ! Mighty phantoms like these disdain the in- 
firmities of language. They may utter voices 
through the organs of man when they dwell in 30 



LEVANA. 165 

human hearts, but amongst themselves is no 
voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in their 
kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with 
Levana; they whispered not; they sang not; 

5 though oftentimes methought they might have 
sung, for I upon earth had heard their mysteries 
oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by 
dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants 
they are, they utter their pleasure, not by sounds 

10 that perish, or by words that go astray, but by 
signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in 
secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and 
hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. 
They wheeled in mazes ; I spelled the steps. They 

15 telegraphed from afar ; I read the signals. They 
conspired together; and on the mirrors of dark- 
ness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the 
symbols; mine are the words. 

What is it the Sisters are ? What is it that they 

20 do ? Let me describe their form, and their pres- 
ence : if form it were that still fluctuated in its 
outline, or presence it were that forever advanced 
to the front, or forever receded amongst shades. 
The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 

25 marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night 
and day raves and moans, calling for vanished 
faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was 
heard of lamentation, — Rachel weeping for her 
children, and refusing to be comforted. She it 

30 was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when 



166 SELECTIONS FKOM DE QUINCEY. 

Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, 
and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, 
heard at times as they trotted along floors over- 
head, woke pulses of love in household hearts that 
were not unmarked in heaven. 5 

Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, 
by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, often- 
times challenging the heavens. She wears a dia- 
dem round her head. And I knew by childish 
memories that she could go abroad upon the lo 
winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or 
the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the 
mustering of summer clouds. This Sister, the eld- 
er, it is that carries keys more than papal at her 
girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. 15 
She, to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the 
bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and 
so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, 
eight years old, with the sunny countenance, re- 
sisted the temptations of play and village mirth 20 
to travel all day long on dusty roads with her 
afflicted father. For this did God send her a great 
reward. In the spring-time of the year, and 
whilst yet her own Spring was budding, he re- 
called her to himself. But her blind father 25 
mourns forever over her; still he dreams at mid- 
night that the little guiding hand is locked within 
his own ; and still he wakens to a darkness that is 
now within a second and a deeper darkness. This 
Mater Lachrymarum has also been sitting all this 30 



LEVANA. 167 

winter of 1844-5 within the bed-chamber of the 
Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less 
pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, 
and left behind her a darkness not less profound. 

5 By the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of 
Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers 
of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless chil- 
dren, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to 
Mississippi. And her, because she is the first- 

10 born of her house, and has the widest empire, let 
us honour with the title of "Madonna!" 

The second sister is called Mater Siispiriorum — 
Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, 
nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no 

15 diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, 
would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could 
read their story; they would be found filled with 
perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten 
delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, 

20 on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, 
forever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She 
groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. 
Her sister. Madonna, is oftentimes starmy and 
frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and 

25 demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of 
Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of 
rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abject- 
ness. Here is the meekness that belongs to the 
hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. 

30 Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twi- 



168 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCE Y. 

light. Mutter she does at times, but it is in soli- 
tary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in 
ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to 
his rest. This Sister is the visitor of the Pariah, 
of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the 5 
Mediterranean galleys; of the English crimi- 
nal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books 
of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the 
baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon a 
solitary grave, which to him seems the altar over- lo 
throwij of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which 
altar no oblations can now be availing, whether 
towards pardon that he might implore, or towards 
reparation that he might attempt. Every slave 
that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with 15 
timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the 
earth, our general mother, but for him a step- 
mother, — as he points with the other hand to the 
Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed 
and sequestered; — every woman sitting in dark- 20 
Jiess, without love to shelter her head, or hope to 
illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born in- 
stincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affec- 
tions which God implanted in her womanly bosom, 
having been stifled by social necessities, now burn 25 
sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst 
the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unre- 
turning May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God 
will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all 
that are betrayed and all that are rejected oiif-30 



LEVANA. 169 

casts by traditionary law, and children of hered- 
itary disgrace, — all these walk with Our Lady of 
Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it 
little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the 

5 tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every 
clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she 
finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious 
England there are some that, to the world, carry 
their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet 

10 secretly have received her mark upon their fore- 
heads. 

But the third Sister, who is also the young- 
est ! Hush, whisper whilst we talk of her! 

Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should 

15 live ; but within that kingdom all power is hers. 
Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost 
beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and 
her eyes rising so high might be hidden by dis- 
tance; but, being what they are, they cannot be 

20 hidden ; through the treble veil of crape which she 
wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that 
rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of 
day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing 
tide, may be read from the very ground. She is 

25 the defier of God. She also is the mother of 
lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie 
the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation 
that she rules. For she can approach only those 
in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by 

30 central convulsions ; in whom the heart trembles, 



170 SELECTIONS FEOM DE QUINCE Y. 

and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest 
from without and tempest from within. Madonna 
moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still 
with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps tim- 
idly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves 5 
with incalculable motions, bounding, and with 
tiger's leaps. She carries no key ; for, though com- 
ing rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at 
which she is permitted to enter at all. And her' 
name is Mater Tenehrarum — Our Lady of Dark- lo 
ness. 

These were the Semnai Tlieai, or Sublime God- 
desses, these were the Eumenides, or Gracious 
Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering 
propitiation), of my Oxford dreams. Madonna 15 
spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touch- 
ing my head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs ; 
and what she spoke, translated out of the signs 
w^hich (except in dreams) no man reads, was 
this : — 20 

"Lo ! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated 
to my altars. This is he that once I made my 
darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and 
from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. 
Through me did he become idolatrous ; and 25 
through me it was, by languishing desires, that he 
worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy 
grave. Holy was the grave to him ; lovely was its 
darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young 
idolator, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sis- 30 



LEVANA. 171 

ter of Sighs ! Do thou take him now to thy heart,. 
and season him for our dreadful sister. And 
thou/' — turning to the Mater Tenehrarum, she 
said, — "wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do 

^ thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie 
heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her 
tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banisli 
the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, 
scorch the fountains of tears, curse him as only 

10 thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in 
the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought 
not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and 
secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read 
elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful 

15 truths. So shall he rise again before he dies, and 
so shall our commission be gccomplished which 
from God we had, — to plague his heart until we 
had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." 



SAVANNAH-LA-MAR. 

God smote Savannah-la-mar, and in one night, 
by earthquake, removed her, with all her towers . 
standing and population sleeping, from the stead- 
fast foundations of the shore to the coral floors 
of ocean. And God said, "Pompeii did I bury 5 
and conceal from men through seventeen centu- 
ries; this city I will bury, but not conceal. She 
shall be a monument to men of my mysterious 
anger, set in azure light through generations to 
come; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome lo 
of my tropic seas." This city, therefore, like a 
mighty .galleon with all her apparel mounted, 
streamers flying, and tackling perfect, seems float- 
ing along the noiseless depths of ocean ; and often- 
times in glassy calms, through the translucid at- 15 
mosphere of water that now stretches like an air- 
woven awning above the silent encampment, mari- 
ners from every clime look down into her courts 
and terraces, count her gates, and number the 
spires of her churches. She is one ample ceme- 20 
tery, and has been for many a year; but in the 
mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic 
latitudes she fascinates the eye with a Fata-Mor- 
gana revelation, as of human life still subsisting 
172 



SAVANNAH-LA-MAR. i;3 

in submarine asylums sacred from the storms that 
torment our upjDer air. 

Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean 
depths, by the peace of human dwellings privi- 

5 leged from molestation, by the gleam of marble 
altars sleeping in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes 
in dreams did I and the Dark Interpreter cleave 
the watery veil that divided us from her streets. 
"We looked into the belfries, where the pendulous 

10 bells were waiting in vain for the summons which 
should awaken their marriage peals; together we 
touched the mighty organ-keys, that sang no jubi- 
lates for the ear of heaven, that sang no requiems 
for the ear of human sorrow ; together we searched 

15 the silent nurseries, where the children were all 
asleep, and had been asleep through five genera- 
tions. ''They are waiting for the heavenly dawn,'' 
whispered the Interpreter to himself: '^and, when 
that comes, the bells and the organs will utter a 

20 jubilate repeated by the echoes of Paradise." 
Then, turning to me, he said, "This is sad, this is 
piteous; but less would not have sufficed for the 
purpose of God. Look here. Put into a Eoman 
clepsydra one hundred drops of water; let these 

25 run out as the sands in an hour-glass; every drop 
measuring the hundredth part of a second, so that 
each shall represent but the three-hundred-and- 
sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now, count the 
drops as they race along ; and, when the fiftieth of 

30 the hundred is passing, behold ! forty-nine are not, 



174 SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCE Y. 

because already they have perished; and fifty are 
not, because they are yet to come. You see, there- 
fore, how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the 
true and actual present. Of that time which we 
call the present, hardly a hundredth part but be- ^ 
longs either to a past which has fled, or to a future 
which is still on the wing. It has perished, or it 
is not born. It was, or it is not. Yet even this 
approximation to the truth is infinitely false. For 
again subdivide that solitary drop, which only was ^^ 
found to represent the present, into a lower series 
of similar fractions, and the actual present which 
you arrest measures now but the thirty-sixth mil- 
lionth of an hour; and so by infinite declensions 
the true and very present, in which only we live i^ 
and enjoy, will vanish into a mote of a mote, dis- 
tinguishable only by a heavenly vision. There- 
fore the present, which only man possesses, offers 
less capacity for his footing than the slenderest 
film that ever spider twisted from her womb. 20 
Therefore, also, even this incalculable shadow from 
the narrowest pencil of moonlight is more transi- 
tory than geometry can measure, or thought of 
angel can overtake. The time which is contracts 
into a mathematic point ; and even that point per- 25 
ishes a thousand times before we can utter its 
birth. All is finite in the present ; and even that 
finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards 
death. But in God there is nothing finite; but 
in God there is nothing transitory; but in God 33 



SAVANNAH-LAM AK. 175 

there can be nothing that tends to death. There- 
fore, it follows, that for God there can be no 
present. Tlie future is the present of God, and 
to the future it is that he sacrifices the human 

5 present. Therefore it is that he works by earth- 
quake. Therefore it is that the works by grief. 
0, deep is the ploughing of earthquake ! 0, deep" 
— (and his voice swelled like a sanctus rising from 
the choir of a cathedral) — "0, deep is the plough- 

10 ing of grief ! But oftentimes less would not suf- 
fice for the agriculture of God. Upon a night of 
earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant 
habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an in- 
fant he raises oftentimes from human intellects 

15 glorious vintages that could not else have been. 
Less than, these fierce ploughshares would not have 
stirred the stubborn soil. The one is needed for 
Earth, our planet, — for Earth itself as the dwell- 
ing place of man ; but the other is needed yet 

20 oftener for God's mightiest instrument, — yes" (and 
he looked solemnly at myself), "is needed for the 
mysterious children of the earth !" 



NOTES. 



JOAN OF ARC. 

Page 33, line 1. Notice the "epic abruptness" with which 
the piece opens. 

33 : 3. Hebrew shepherd hoy: David. 

34: 11- Vaucouleurs: a town near Domremy, and the 
starting point of .Joan's military career. 

34: 22. Those that share thy bJood: a collateral relative 
of Joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title of Du 
Lys. (DeQuincey's note.) 

34: 28. Ell contumace: "in rebellion," because disobeying 
the royal mandate. 

36 : 15 seq. De Quincey's prejudice against France, which 
he shared with most Englishmen of his day, appears in these 
lines, as elsewhere throughout the essay. The portion of 
Michelet's history dealing with Joan of Arc is m Vol. V, 
which appeared in 1841, and was translated into English 
Ghortly before the date of this essay. 

37: 9 seq. Notice the three metaphors following in rapid 
succession. 

38 : l-o. The lines which De Quincey parodies run as 
follows : 

"The stout Earl of Northumberland 
A vow to York did make, 
His pleasure in the Scottish woods 
Three summer days to take." 

39 : 16. Hannibal: the famous Carthaginian enemy of 
Rome, b. 247 B. C, d. about 183 B. C. Mithridates: King 
of Pontus in Asia Minor 120-63 B. C. ; he conducted a long 
series of wars against Rome and when ultimately defeated 
was, by his own command, killed by one of his soldiers. 

39 : 23. Delenda est Anglia Victrix: "Victorious England 
must be destroyed" ; from Cato the Elder's Delenda est 
Carthago, "Carthage must be destroyed," with which ho is 
said to have concluded every speech in the Roman senate. 

39: 29. Hyder AU, Tlp^oo: Maharajas of Mysore in India 
in the 18th century ; both waged war against England. 



178 NOTES. 

40 : 25 seq. The digression upon the. word Champagne bor- 
ders upon "rigmarole," as does the passage below concerning 
the two roads through Domremy. 

42 : IG. Notice the vigor and picturesqueness of the word 
"vixen" in this connection ; also below, "little fiery cousin 
. . . forever tilting at the heart of France." 

42 : 22. Crccy, Agincotirt: Victories of the English over 
vastly superior French forces, the first in 1346, the second in 
1415. See Drayton's vigorous "Ballad of Agincourt." 

42 : 23. Nicopolis: a battle in which the Ottoman ruler 
Bajazet defeated (139G) the Emperor Sigismund and John 
of Burgundy. A considerable number of French nobles and 
knights were taken prisoner. 

43 : 22. The two following paragraphs describing the 
state of France in Joan's youth afford a fine example of 
De Quincey's heightened style when moved by the imagi- 
native quality of his subject. 

44: 2. Poictios: At Toictiers, in 1356, the Black Prince 
with 8,000 men defeated the French King John wath 60,000 
men. 

45 : 15. Double Pope: For over sixty years (1309-1377) 
the Popes lived at Avignon in the south of France. After 
the return of Gregory XI to Rome in 1377 there was a 
period of forty years during which two rival claimants dis- 
puted the papal throne, one at Rome and one at Avignon. 

47 : 1 ff. Do you feel that this fine description of the 
forest surrounding Domremy is marred by the intrusion of 
any inharmonious matter? 

51 : 12. Prwdial: from Latin prmlhon, farm, estate. 

51 : 2S. Juan Fernandez: the island upon which the Eng- 
lish sailor Alexander Selkirk, was wrecked ; Selkirk's story 
was used by Defoe as the basis of Robinson Crusoe. 

52; 13. As tu donne, etc. : "Have you fed the pig?" As tu 
sauve, etc.: "Have you saved the lilies of France?" 

54 : 2. Coup d'essai: "First attempt." 

54: 10. ''Pricks" for sheriffs: a reference to the custom 
by which the English sovereigns select sheriffs by plunging 
a bodkin at random through one of the names on a list pre- 
sented to them. 

55 : 8. Un pen fort: "a little too strong for belief." 

55: 11-13. DavpJiin . . . no crown.. The English had 
disputed the right of Charles VII. to the throne of France, 
and being in control of a large part, of northern France, they 
had prevented his consecration as king at Rheims. Charles's 



NOTES. 1T9 

father, Charles VI., died in 1422 ; the coronation of 
Charles VII. at Rheims did not take place until 1429. 

55: 20. The Enolish hoy: the English king, Henry VI., 
was then (1429) in his ninth year. 

56: 1, 2. Is the metaphor of the oven appropriate in tone? 

56 : 3, seq. Does not this discussion of the small points of 
Southey's poem constitute a weak digression from the real 
Kubject ? 

56: 17. A parte ante: before the book containing the 
pirated passage was written. 

57 : 27. France Delivered: imitated from the title of 
Tasso's poem, "Jerusalem Delivered." 

59: 14. Coup-de-main: literally -stroke of hand," i. e., in 
this connection, "sudden onslaught." 

61 : 21. Nolebat uti, etc. : "She would not use her sword 
or put anyone to death." 

63 : 8. Bishop that art, etc. : De Quincey adapts the 
prophecy of the witches to Macbeth, Act I, Sc. 3, and Lady 
Macbeth's soliloquy, Act I, Sc. 5. 

63: 12. Triple croa-n: the papal tiara. 

63 : 23, seq. Notice the fine movement of this sentence, 
strongly rhythmic, but with a genuine prose rhythm, dis- 
tinct from that of verse. 

64 : 29. Pressed her with an objection, etc. : The "objec- 
tion" referred to has not been traced by the commentators 
who have examined the original records. 

67: 22. They are rising eveit now. At the time De Quin- 
cey wrote this essay the original records of Joan's trial were 
being published in Paris. 

68: 17. Tellurians: Earth-dwellers, from Tellus, earth. 

68: 21. Luxor: a modern village in Upper Egypt, on the 
site of ancient Thebes; used here as synonymous with 
Thebes. 

69 : 13. Daughter of Ccesars: Marie Antoinette was the 
daughter of Francis I. of Austria. To him as head of the 
German Confederation officially known as the "Holy Roman 
Empire," was supposed to have passed the sceptre of the 
Ct^sars, through Charlemagne. But the word Caesar is often 
used broadly as synonymous with Emperor. 

69 : 16. Charlotte Corday: A French noblewoman who 
killed Marat, the blood-thirsty Terrorist, during the Revo 
lution. 

73:19. ^ycight of metal . . . broke the vast line of 
battle: make clear to yourself the metaphor involved in these 
lines. 



180 NOTES. 

74 : 27 seq. Note the strong and stately rhythms of the 
concluding passage, and how they magnify the effect of 
solemnity. 

77: 17. English prince. Regent of France: John, Duke of 
Bedford, brother of Henry V. 

77: 18, 19. Lord of Winchester . . . that died and made 
no sign: See 2 Henry VI., Act III, Sc. 3. 

78: 12. Bloody coronation rohes: probably means Joan's 
armor, blood-stained from recent battles. 



NOTES TO THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH. 
1. THE GLORY OF MOTION. 

79: 9. Invent (or . . . discover): a play upon the 
Latin word inveniio, meaning discovery. 

80:25. Trafalgar, Salamanca, Vittoria, Waterloo: all 
English victories in the Napoleonic wars between 180."5 and 
1815. 

83: 8. Pariahs: the lowest of the Hindoo castes; hence, 
in general, despised persons or outcasts. Masson notes 
De Quincey's curious fondness for this word. Can you think 
of a reason why it should have impressed itself on his 
imagination? 

84 : 11. Same logical construction: the rule of logic re- 
ferred to runs, De non apparentihiis et non emistentibus 
eadem est lav. 

84 : 22. In the labor disputes of De Quincey's time, "snob" 
was equivalent to the modern word "scab." "Nobs" were, 
as we should say, "union men." The words have undergone 
a curious change of meaning. 

86: 1. Great ivits jump, i. e., agree, coincide. Cf. Othello, 
Act I, Sc. 3, 1. 5. 

86: 2. Celestial intellect of China: one of the native 
designations of China is Tien Chan, "Heavenly Dynasty," 
or, as we say. Celestial Empire. 

87: 14. Jury-reins: cf. jury-mast, an Improvised mast to 
take the place of one lost. "Jury" seems to come from 
Latin adjuvare, to aid. 

87 : 28. Ca ira: "that will go," "that will succeed ;" the 
refrain of a popular song sung by the French revolutionists. 

88: 15. Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero: a mere haphazard list of 
ancient philosophers. 

83 : 7. British Museum: the great English national library 
and museum in London. 



NOTES. 181 

89 : 12. Xoters: dealers in promissory notes. 

89 : 14. House of life: an astrological term, used in the 
casting of horoscopes. But De Quincey means merely "one's 
lot.- 

90: 1. Von TroiVs Iceland: De Quincey's footnote is: 
"The allusion is to a well-known chapter in Von Troil's 
work, entitled 'Concerning the Snakes of Iceland.' The en 
tire chapter consists of these six words — 'There are no 
snakes in Iceland.'" 

90: 2. Parliamentary rat: a cant term of the day, mean- 
ing one who changes his party, a turn-coat. 

90: 13. Lwsa majestas: an offense against majesty, a term 
of Roman law usually given in its French form, lest 
ma jest e. 

90: 27. Jam proximus, etc.: .^i^neid, Book II, 311. 

91 : 29. Quarterings: to "quarter" was, in the language 
of the day, to cross over in order to give the right of way 
to another vehicle. 

92: 5. Benefit of clergy: originally exemption from trial 
by the secular courts, granted to persons who could read 
and who were therefore by inference ecclesiastics. So, in 
general, any kind of judicial privilege. 

92: 7. Systole and diastole: the implied metaphor is that 
of the contraction (systole) and expansion (diastole) of the 
heart, which sends the blood through the veins. 

93: 8. False echoes: the words quoted were reported 
(falsely, De Quincey thinks) to have been said by Napoleon 
at the battle of Marengo, over the body of his officer Desaix. 

94:8. False, fleeting, perjured Brummagem: the adjec- 
tives are echoed from Shakespeare's Richard III., Act I, Sc. 
4, 1. 55. "Brummagem" is a corruption of Birmingham ; 
it is often used as an adjective meaning tawdry, from thfe 
sham articles manufactured there. It is here used derisively 
for the real name of the town. 

94 : 11. Luxor: see note to "Joan of Arc," page 68, line 21. 

94 : 14. Jacobinical: revolutionary. 

95 : 2. "Besides the king's name is a tower of strength 

Which they upon ihe adverse party want." 

—Richard III, Act 5, Sc. 3. 

96: 1. Omrahs: ameers, court-grandees. 

96: 25. Roman pearls: a kind of imitation pearl formerly 
manufactured in Rome. 

96: 28. 6th of Edicard Longshanks, chapter 18: it is a 
part of the rather forced humor of this passage that the 



182 NOTES. 

statute in question lias onlj- fifteen chapters. Stage-coaches 
were of course unknown in the England of Edward I. 

97 : 19. Magna loquimur: "We speak great things." 
Magna vivimus: "We experience great things." 

98: 4. Salamanca: the battle of that name, won by the 
English and their allies in the struggle against Napoleon. 

98: 14, Nile nor Trafalgar: the battles of the Nile and of 
Trafalgar were Nelson's greatest victories. 

98 : 27. Laureled tnail: when "going down with victory" 
the coach, horses, driver, and guard were adorned with 
laurel, as well as with flowers, oak-leaves, and ribbons. 

99 : 22. She brings along with her a troop, etc. : i. e., by 
virtue of her connection with De Quincey's dreams. 

100: 22. Ulysses, . . . his accursed how: the tale of 
the slaying by Ulysses of the suitors of Penelope is told in 
the twenty-second book of the Odyssey. 
101 : 20. "But all our praises why should lords engross? 
Rise, honest Muse ! and sing the Man of Ross." 
— Pope, Epistle on the Use of Riches, 249. 
102: 13. Turrets: upright rings used as guides for the 
reins. 

103 : 14, seq. In this passage about Mr. Waterton, an Eng- 
lish country gentleman who had gained notoriety by harness- 
ing and riding a crocodile De Quincey falls into unmis- 
takable "rigmarole," 

104: 9. Final cause: the phrase is used in a technical 
philosophical sense, meaning "ihe end for which man was 
designed." 

104 : 17, seq. In this concluding paragraph of the section, 
Do Quincey transports us without warning into the visionary 
region of his dreams. 

105:26. Ooing down with victory: Englishmen always 
speak of "going down" from London, and "going up" from 
the provinces. 

107: 7. Attelage: a French word meaning a "team" of 
horses or other draft animals ; here expanded to include the 
four horses and the coach drawn by them, 

113: 21. Fey: the Vvord is not Celtic, but from Anglo- 
Saxon fwge, meaning doomed, fated. 

114: 4, Glittering laurels: De Quincey says in a footnote: 
"I must observe that the color of green suffers almost a 
spiritual change and exaltation under the effect of Bengal 
lights." 

114: 19. Talavera: the battle of Titlavera was a British 
victory ; but the delays of the Spanish allies of the English 



NOTES. 183 

gave the French a chance to render the results of the battle 
indecisive. 

115: 2j. Aceldama: field of blood. The word originally 
applied to the potter's field near Jerusalem supposed to have 
been purchased with the thirty pieces of silver which Judas 
got by betraying Christ. 

2. THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 

120: o. ^iaOaparos: from two Greek words meaning 
^•force" and "death." The compound itself is not good 
Greek. 

123: 11. The quoted words are from Paradise Lost, 
Book IX, 782. 

124: ?^. Doicn mail: i. e., from London. 

125 : 9. Jus dominii: right of domain. 

125: 20. Jus gentium: law of the gens or tribe, covering 
theft, etc. 

126: 4. Assessor: used in the literal sense, from Latin 
assidere, to sit beside. 

126: 11. The line quoted from Vergil describes the Cyclops 
Polyphemus. 

126: 17. Calenders: one of the Mohammedan orders of 
mendicant dervishes ; in the Arabian Nights' story the three 
mendicants are all blind of the left eye. 

126: 27. Al Sirat: the bridge to the Mohammedan Para- 
dise, over which all the blessed must pass ; it is narrower 
than the edge of a razor. 

127: 5. Diphrelatic art: despite De Quincey's sober apol- 
ogy, the pompous word is used for humorous effect. 

129: 14. Aurigation: "driving." from Latin auriga, chari- 
oteer. 

130: 2. Pastoral: in its original sense of "shepherding," 
from Latin pastor, a shepherd. 

130: 15. Seven atmospheres of sleep: a whimsically 
pseudo-scientific way of denoting the accumulated effect of 
three days and four nights of wakefulness. 

132: 6-1."). De Quincey is here referring to the immense 
manufacturing industry of Manchester, in which town mod- 
ern machinery was first employed on a huge scale. 

134: IG. Radix: root, beginning. 

135: 2. Wrong side of the road: English usage prescribes 
the left-hand side of the road in driving. 

135: 16. Quartering: see note to line 29, page 91. 

136 : 19. Taxed cart: usually called "tax-cart," a two- 



184 NOTES. 

wheeled spring-cart (similar to the present dog-cart) for- 
merly taxed by the government. 

138: 11. Shout of AcJiiUcs: "Thrice great Achilles spake, 
And thrice (in heat of all the charge) the Trojans started 

back. 
Twelve men, of greatest strength in Troy, left with their 

lives exhaled. 
Tneir chariots and their darts, to death with his three sum- 
mons called." 

Iliad, XVIII, 228, Chapman's translation. 
138: 13. Aided by Pallas: in the passage in the Iliad here 
referred to the goddess Pallas reechoes Achilles' shout. 

139 : 25. A shilling a day: the pay of the common 
soldier. 



3. DREAM-FUGUE. 

144: 16. Tumultuosissimamenti: the superlative of the 
Italian adverb meaning tumultuously : placed here by De 
Quincey in imitation of the directions added by musical 
composers to their works, for the guidance of performers. 

144: 18. Averted signs: De Quincey's footnote is : "I read 
the course and changes of the lady's agony in the succession 
of her involuntary gestures ; but it must be remembered 
that I read all this from the rear, never once catching the 
lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly. 

144: 21. Woman's Ionic form: The Ionic column was sup- 
posed to have been suggested by the proportions of the female 
form, the Doric column by those of the male. 

146: 20. Corymhi: wreathed clusters. 

147 : 4. Quarrel: bolt. 

151 : 2.5. Campo Santo of the Cathedral graves: Campo 
Santo (Sacred Field) is the Italian purase for burial-ground, 
taken originally from the cemetery at Pisa, the soil of which 
was brought from .Jerusalem during the crusades. It must 
be remembered that the dead were frequently buried beneath 
the cathedral pavement, the memorial slabs forming a part 
of the floor. 

151:27. Necropolis: from two Greek words meaning 
"city of the dead," 

157: "Author's Postscript." This was originally printed by 
De Quincey as a part of the preface to that volume of his 
collected works which contained "The English Mail Coach." 



NOTES. 185 

LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 

Title: This notable piece and Savaniwh La Mar are both 
drawn from Suspiria de Profundls, an unflnished series 
which De Quincey began in 1845, and which he intended as 
"another Opium Confessions." From a prefatory note to 
the enlarged edition of the Confessions of an English Opium 
Eater, published in 1856, it seems clear that the projected 
series was to consist of "a succession of some twenty or 
twenty-five dreams and noonday visions, which had arisen 
under the latter stages of opium influence." Levana and 
Our Ladies of Sorrow was, so De Quincey informs us, to 
''rehearse or prefigure their course," a section of the dreams 
being assigned to each of the three "Ladies of Sorrow." 
The loss of the completed product is deeply to be regretted ; 
but the magnificently imaginative prelude is self-explanatory 
and in no sense fragmentary. For comment on the style. 
see the Introduction, pp. 30, 31. 

163: 10. On the foundation: holding a scholarship. 

163: 25 ff. Graces, Parcae, Furies, Muses: the passage is 
practically self-explanatory. The Parcae are the Fates. 
For further information consult Gayley's Classical Myths, 
or any good classical dictionary. 

165 : 15. Telegraphed: Why would the world have a less 
prosaic suggestion in De Quincey's time than today? 

165: 27. She stood in Ra)na, etc. :"A voice was heard in 
Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping ; Rachel weeping 
for her children refused to be comforted for her children, 
because they were not :" Jeremiah. XXXI, 15. Cf. also 
Matthew, II, 18. 

166: 14. Reus more than papal: Cf. Matthew, XVI. 19, 
'•And I give unto thee [Peter J the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven." 

167: 1. Within the hed-chamher of the Czar: In 1844 
Alexandra, daughter of Nicholas I., died. 

168: 6. Mediterranean galleys: the reference is to the 
obsolete custom of punishing criminals by labor at the oar 
in galleys. 

168 : 7. Xorfolk Island: a Pacific island formerly used by 
England as a penal colony. 

169: 5. The tents of Shem: Cf. Genesis IX, 27: "God 
shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of 
Shem." The Shemites or Semites are the Hebrew race ; but 
De Quincey has in mind all nomads. 

169 : 16. Turretted like that of Cybele: Cybele. the wife 



186 NOTES. 

of Saturn, and mother of the gods of Olympus, is usually 
represented as wearing a mural crown. De Quincey uses 
her as an example of a remote, mysterious, and terrible 
deity. 

170 : 13. The Eumenides: a euphemistic name for the 
Furies. 

SAVANNAH LA MAR. 

Title: See introductory note to Levana and Our Ladies 
of Sorrow: see also Introduction, p. 30. Savannah La Mar 
is the name of a small town in Jamaica, on which island 
one of De Quincey's brothers lost his life. The allegorical 
meaning of the dream lies on the surface. 

172: 23. Fata Morgana revelation: Fata Morgana means 
Morgana the Fairy. She was the sister of King Arthur. 
To her influence is attributed the mirage seen in the Straits 
of Messina. 

173 : 7. The Dark Interpreter: De Quincey is here, as in 
parts of Levana, inventing his own mythology. 

173: 12. Jubilates: the one hundredth Psalm, Jubilate 
Deo, the canticle that in the Anglican liturgy follows the 
second lesson in the morning service ; the word is derived 
from the Latin jubilare, to shout for joy. 

173: 24. Clepsydra: a device for marking the passage of 
time by the flow of water from a vessel through a small 
opening. 

175: 8. Sanctus: a part of the Communion Service in the 
Anglican Church ; the so called "angelic hymn" in which 
the phrase "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts" is 
chanted. 



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